The Seaside Road

On Tuesday of this week I headed over to Virginia's beautiful Eastern Shore for the day.  Often I vary the trip a bit getting off the main road, Route 13, primarily because it shows the ugliest sides of a lovely place. However, it's also usually thick with tractor trailers, towed boats, farm vehicles and drivers of questionable ability or sobriety.  In the summer it gets worse as people from points north further crowd the road speeding through, minds dialed to vacation mode.  This diversity of vehicles and drivers, few medium strips, several railroad crossings and an unlimited number of intersections all combine to make 13 one of the state's deadliest roads.  It is regularly the scene of horrendous accidents, which never fail to touch members of this close-knit community. 

Though it takes a little longer, my preferred way to travel on the Shore is by the Seaside Road, which runs close to the ocean side of the peninsula.  Its lacks the commercial blight and traffic of Route 13.  Between the fields, forests and marshes are a few small towns clustered around harbors facing the barrier islands and the Atlantic beyond.  The first few photos were taken in the little town of Quinby, Va.

Just outside of Quinby is one of my favorite spots on the Shore overlooking the Machipongo River.

The town of Oyster seems to be pulled in several directions.  There is decaying evidence from a once thriving seafood hub, an outpost of the Virginia Institutee of Marine Science, a high tech clam farm and second homes on stilts.

As I was heading home on Tuesday the sky suddenly shifted near Seaview as a bank of fog rolled over the land from the ocean. (Might this pass for Kansas?)

The Seaside Road ends (or begins) at The Eastern Shore National Wildlife Refuge, and by the time I got there the fog was seriously thick, and cold as well.  However, I knew it might behove the photographer to get out of the car.

Update: I have chosen the picture below as my entry into Gardening Gone Wild's, Picture This photo contest. February's theme is "genius loci" or sense of place, and this shot does a good job of portraying what the refuge is like.

I am the child of a mixed marriage.  My father's family were Seasiders and my mother's were Baysiders.  So to maintain familial harmony, at some point I will have to show you some scenes from the other alternative to 13, the Bayside Road.