Day 12: Jamestown, Yorktown, Williamsburg; Chesapeake Bay Tunnel to Philadelphia

Visiting the historic towns in Virginia is a refresher course in history and you start connecting the pieces together in America’s history.   This is where the English first arrived and settled permanently in America.  Virginia Company in England, a group of rich investors inspired by the stories of Portuguese and Spanish riches from their Americas expeditions in 16^th century funded the voyage. Spanish and Portuguese had some success in robing gold and minerals from Aztecs, Incas and Native tribes lived in Americas and English wanted their share.  However, Virginia expedition was rockier and few survived after their arrival.  Indentured workers, farmers and other bonded labors imported from England, arrived at later stages and there was some success in tobacco and cash crop cultivation. Virginia later became a Royal colony and British expanded to other Eastern parts of North America.  Native Indians perished, slaves arrived and then economic immigration started in a big way to shape the America as we know now.   It’s five centuries worth history so I better leave it to Wikipedia.

There is lot to read and recall when you visit these three towns on the banks of James and York rivers. Drive was beautiful and we often stopped to play with shallow waters and soft clay on the river beds. Then there were museums, historic trails and buildings that’s valuable to an average tourist in that area.   Afternoon we returned to Virginia Beach oceanfront to recollect my visit in 2004. Also, since we told Tara at Charlotte that we are going to Virginia Beach, she kept asking for beach and quite did not understand it’s a place name. She enjoyed the warm water and soft waves and we spent a couple of hours there.  Our next destination is Philadelphia and we wanted to take the U.S Route 13 & 113, Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.
 

Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel is 23 miles long consists of long tunnels and trestle bridges. The engineering wonder is worth every penny of $12 toll.  In the middle of the bay we could see a ship approaching the tunnel area to cross and then we were inside the tunnel for mile. Once we reached the other side of the Bay we were driving in rural Eastern shore of Maryland with a low density population.   By the time we crossed Salisbury it was dark and we stopped in a convenience store to get some supplies. We then passed through cities of Dover and Bear in Delaware and joined I95. It was a bit difficult drive after it was dark through the country side and the roads were at times empty too.   The farms and old style houses and lot of greens were quite refreshing until it was dark.  It took almost five hours drive to get to i95 as the roads were slower and Philadelphia was another one hour away.  Tara took a nap so we decided to drive straight to the hotel and not to stop for dinner.  By 9 PM, we arrived at the Sheraton downtown hotel in Philadelphia, tired.