The girls usually spend one week of the summer down in Charlottesville with my family. Since I’m working from anywhere these days, I went down with them and stayed the week. We hadn’t seen everyone in-person since Sophie’s birthday back in March, so it was really nice to finally give real hugs. The week was pretty low key. Most of the activities that the girls do while down there are closed this summer, or we just weren’t comfortable doing them, so we spent a lot of time at the house and just took a couple of trips out.
One day Becky and I took the girls to Sugar Hollow, which is a beautiful hiking spot where I spent a lot of time in high school.
On a rock in Sugar Hollow
Another day we went to a lake that was open for swimming.
One afternoon we met up with my friend Sarah and her daughter Lexi, who is 2 weeks younger than Sophie. We typically see them once or twice a year. The girls have totally different personalities, but get along pretty well. This time they bonded over Tic Toc (if I could find an eye roll emoji I would insert it here).
Sophie & Lexi (looking at Tic Toc together). Also pictured, adorable Caleb, who is just a year.
And the rest of the time we spent at the house – playing in the yard, fishing, and just hanging out.
Sophie and Penny fishing at the lake.
Lauren lost a tooth while we were down there – her 8th tooth, and third to lose while we’re with my family. Must be a tooth fairy preferred location.
Holding up her 8th lost tooth.
We of course travel with all of the animals, which right now just included Lauren’s tortoise, Jewels, and Sophie’s parakeets, Princess and Zebra. Jewels had an opportunity to meet Vahid, and she was not thrilled about it. She kept her head in the shell the entire time.
Jewels and Vahid meet.
Lauren and Ari are pretty inseparable, and spent nearly the entire time together. At times it makes it tough for Soph because she feels left out. She and Ari also play together, but their personalities are very similar, which usually means it leads to fighting pretty quickly.
Mom also wanted to recreate a picture that she took of Dad, Becky and I about 30 years ago when we had Hannah, who is a doppelganger of Penny. Penny wasn’t super into taking direction, and we’re all a lot bigger than we were 30 years ago!
1992 vs. 2020 The whole fam on our last night there.
My birthday was very low key this year – partially because of the coronavirus and partially because I turned 41. Who cares about 41 really? We spent the day at the house and my big present was a bench for the backyard, which I love.
Here are a few shots from the lovely evening in the backyard. We enjoyed some champagne, takeout from the Guardhouse in Gladwyne, and some good snuggles on my new bench 🙂
The summer that we planned for in the beginning of the year is turning out a lot different than the summer we’re experiencing. Two of the three summer camps the kids were planning on attending have been cancelled and our August trip to Alaska has been cancelled. We did however plan to spend a week on the boat and decided that since we’re already working from home, why not extend time on the boat and work from there. So we spend the last three weeks on the Chesapeake. The first week we were at my in-laws house in Rock Hall, and then we hopped on the boat. The kids spent two straight weeks on the boat and then Dave and I and his parents traded on and off traveling with them.
We took the first leg from Rock Hall to Broad Creek, the Wye River and then to St. Michaels. The Sharps met us in St. Michaels and spent the next five days traveling down to Smith Island, Solomon Island and then to Crisfield, MD, where we met them for another switch.
The weather on our first day out was not ideal – rain and chilly – but fortunately that was the only day of bad weather we had.
Lauren and I kayaking on Broad Creek
Sunset on the Wye River
Smith Island is known for their cake, which has multiple layers of cake and icing. It was a hit.
Over the next seven days we traveled a little further south to Tangier, Va., which is a small island off the coast of Virginia.
Tangier, Va.
It’s been a destination on Dave’s list for a while, and I’d actually never even heard of it, even though I grew up in Virginia! It was like no other place I’ve been in the US, and felt a lot like coming into a small Caribbean island. The marina hasn’t been well maintained, mostly because it’s run by a man named Mr. Parks, who has been running it for decades and is now 89. It’s unclear if there is a succession plan in place, but based on our experience, when Mr. Parks is no longer with us, I think the marina won’t be long for the island. But that might not make a difference because it’s projected that the island won’t be there for much longer anyway. It’s slowly sinking into the Chesapeake. It’s also beautiful.
There are about 450 people that live there full time, most of them professional crabbers. We were able to walk the full island and we saw 2 ice creams shops, 1 restaurant called Lorraine’s that had the best soft shell crab I’ve ever had, 2 churches, 1 K-12 school, 1 island history museum, and a heck of a lot of Trump supporters. Most everyone drives around in golf carts on the roads that still exist, and parts of the island that are no longer accessible via golf cart are accessible via boat. We brought our sea kayaks along with us and explored the island that way as well.
Sophie with her catch
above ground graves
crab shacks on the water
golf cart in the driveway
view from the middle of the island
our view from the marina
Dave and Sophie exploring an area that used to be a road
Lauren sitting on the front of the kayak I was paddling. It was so shallow here she could have just stood up and talked next to the boat.
A fellow sailor told us about a beach that we could walk to, which was about 1.5 miles from the marina. One day we walked there and fortunately on the next day we brought the girls razor scooters so they rode there – much less complaining 😉
the walk to the beach
Sophie caught a puffer fish in my hat
After two days in Tangier we headed back north and over the next five days hit Lookout Point, Solomon’s Island, North Beach and Flat Island.
Sunset at Lookout Point
We anchored out the last night at Flat Island, but the other spots we docked at marinas. Most had pools which was nice because it was pretty hot and unfortunately in a few of the places there were sea nettles, which hurt terribly when they sting, so the kids couldn’t jump off the boat and swim.
kayaking at Flat Island
The girls did a lot of fishing off the back of the boat, but only made one catch all week, which was unfortunately too small to eat. They were not deterred though.
Over the two weeks Sophie learned to crab from a fellow boater we met. She caught over a dozen crabs, but we didn’t end up keeping any. Lauren learned to dive and by the end of the week had almost perfect form. And I worked on my boat handling skills. The bar was pretty low there, but still, there was good improvement.
We made it back to Rock Hall for the 4th of July and the weather was just too nice, so we hopped back on the boat for a day of anchoring and swimming at our favorite spot, Swan Creek. The Sharps joined us and Dave brought his sunfish to sail around on.
Dave and Soph on the Sunfish
swimming with PopPop
sparklers for the 4th
It was just the long break we needed! At the end of the two week the girls 2 hit 10 ports of call and 273 nautical miles. Not too shabby!
