Well we finished the volunteer gig at the Eastern Shore of VA National Wildlife Refuge last week and have moved over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel (CBBT in local parlance) to Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Ft Story in Norfolk so we can spend Christmas with the girls. We are thinking we should have promised them we would spend Labor Day with them as we are really getting tired of the cold! But, it seems to warm up so rapidly whenever we are around them!
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| The Girls |
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| From the water the CBBT heading out to Fishermans Island |
Crossing the CBBT is always an interesting event. It is sort of like a sea voyage in your car. The bridge is 20 miles long across the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay at the Atlantic Ocean. To your east is the vast Atlantic Ocean and to your west is the vast (but not as vast as the Atlantic) Chesapeake Bay. There are two tunnels that are part of the CBBT, each one is a mile long and they are out of site of land when you approach them! The tunnels are about 2 miles apart. The southern one is for ship traffic destined for the Hampton Roads area and the other one is for ship traffic destined for northern end of Chesapeake Bay. We did take a weekend trip up to the northern end of the bay and there the Bay Bridge is a very high rise bridge and there were definitely ocean going ships in the bay up there. We crossed the CBBT every week to go see the girls but only crossed it in the RV going north to the volunteer gig and then returning last week.
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| Always a bunch of fishing boats hanging around |
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| Our volunteer gig was here! |
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| The bridge portion of CBBT is two lanes each direction |
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| The CBBT heading south from Fishermans Island |
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| Entering one of the two tunnels! |
On the way over in September it was a little disconcerting when we kept hearing this intermittent scraping sound as we went through the tunnels. I knew it could not be serious and I knew we were within one foot of max clearance. It turned out to be the CB antenna! While on the Eastern Shore I switched out that antenna for one that hooks up to our USB modem that we access the internet with and it improved our signal strength and was a little shorter (we do not have a CB radio so no loss there)!
However, our excitement on the return voyage in the RV was provided by and unexplained/unexpected pinging alarm. It started when we stopped short of the bridge to say good by to some friends. We pulled into the Welcome Center Parking lot and spent an hour plus trying to figure out what it was! Since there was no warning messages on the engine control panel and all tires and jacks were in order I really was not too concerned but BJ just knew the RV was going to stop dead in the bottom of one of the tunnels!
Once we got to JEB Little Creek-Ft Story and set up camp we found it was the leveling jack alarm. I found out thru the Tiffin Owners Forum that sometimes a jack will lower slightly as the hydraulic fluid warms and the sensor will set the alarm off even though if you look at the jack as I did, you will not notice the slight drop! The fix is to recycle the jacks. My better solution which I will follow from now on is to stay where the jack fluid is always warm!
At any rate we are in Norfolk until 26 Dec and are looking forward to Christmas with the girls and to my sisters, Marla & CC, joining us for the event. They are bringing Marla's RV up for the holiday and we will have a caravan party on the way back to warmland, aka FLORIDA!
Always at home, no matter where we are!!
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