Trips of Discovery

Make the best of your journey, make some memories

Category: Slow Boat to Florida (SBFL) Series

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ICW / Slow Boat to Florida (SBFL) Series / Tips for your vacation planning

OBX, where coastal legends are born – Part 1

Cover photo: Learning to Hang-Glide on Jockey’s Ridge State Park, Nags Head in the Outer Banks, North Carolina (OBX) Estimated reading time 10 minutes – SBFL 15* – PLANNING TO VISIT – We are continuing to follow the footsteps of Dorothea and Stuart E. Jones in their 1958 National Geographic article titled, “Slow Boat to Florida,” (SBFL), and the 1973 book of Allan C. Fisher, Jr. published by National Geographic, titled, “America’s Inland Waterway.” In our previous post, Dismal Swamp, we passed the Virginia-North Carolina border and stopped at Elizabeth City, North Carolina, near the head of the Albemarle Sound.  While we are there, it is time for us to plan a few excursions in the Outer Banks and visit the same spots that our...

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ICW / Slow Boat to Florida (SBFL) Series / Tips for your vacation planning

Are there alligators in the Dismal Swamp?

Estimated reading 12 – SBFL 14* – PLANNING TO VISIT– Before we get to alligators, it is hard not to recall our Slow Boat to Florida journey up to now.  We avoided challenging seas and traveled only in fair weather for our trips of discovery. We are determined to be on the water only in fair weather.  Once we rushed and made a couple of wrong choices. That is a reality in boating, of course.  But, honestly, thankfully that did not happen working on this series. It was another trip and since then our daughter has refused to join us whenever we have trips longer than 30 minutes out on the open waters. For this series, we are on our way to Florida on the...

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ICW / Slow Boat to Florida (SBFL) Series

There is a battleship at the end of this road

Cover photo: How often can you  find a battleship, nearly 3 football fields long and almost 200 feet tall, at the end of any street? Well, if you are in Norfolk, you definitely could. Go to the intersection of Boush and West Plume Streets and you will see the USS Wisconsin (in the background). Better yet, this amazing battleship is open to visitors. Photo by Thad Zajdowicz. Estimated reading time 15 minutes – SBFL 13*  – PLANNING TO VISIT – 2 Virginia towns not to miss on the way down to Florida on the ICW – Norfolk and Portsmouth. – Imagine this. You have some time on hand and are heading down south to Florida with your boat on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). Let’s...

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ICW / Slow Boat to Florida (SBFL) Series

Ah, Virginia … Inspired by history and adventure

Cover photo: Old Point Comfort, a landing party at Hampton Roads, Virginia. Photo between 1890 and 1901, courtesy of U.S. Library of Congress, contributed by Detroit Publishing Co. … Estimated reading time – 10 minutes – SBFL 12*  – PLANNING TO VISIT – It was a balmy spring Thursday on April 26 on the Virginia shores. After 4½ months at sea, some 104 people from Britain, horses, and supplies landed on Cape Henry to establish the first permanent English-speaking colony in the New World, North America. The year was 1607. As a Smithsonian Magazine article puts it, “One ebullient adventurer later wrote that he was “almost ravished” by the sight of the freshwater streams and ‘faire meddowes and goodly tall trees’ they encountered when they...