We returned to Tilia at the end of May, after about a month in Minnesota. Our time in Minnesota was a great chance to catch up with friends and family, and for Anne to work in the hospital. Anne had a bonus road trip from Minneapolis to Tacoma with Grace and Rose in Rose’s new-to-her 2001 Honda Odyssey.
We left our home marina in Oriental, NC on June 7, with a plan to spend most of the month on the Chesapeake.
Our first day out, we had a 12 hour trip to Alligator River Marina. It is a gas station and marina serving ICW boats and folks driving to the Outer Banks. Quiet, clean and friendly — and Anne had to watch for bears on her morning run!
Our second day was a short trip to Elizabeth City, a pretty spot on the Pasquatonk River in northern North Carolina. We anchored out and dinghied into town for dinner. This positioned us for a two day trip through the Dismal Swamp Canal.
You read that right: the Dismal Swamp, after passing through the Alligator River and Rattlesnake Bay.
Far from dismal, the 22-mile long canal is bordered by the Dismal Swamp State Park and Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. The canal is reportedly the oldest continually operating man-made canal in the United States. It no longer serves commercial traffic, but is dredged a minimum of six feet, passable for us. We even lock through at each end, so great memories of all the locks on our Guidance trip out the Great Lakes and down the St. Lawrence.
Right now, we’re tied up to a dock at the Park Visitors Center, which also happens to be a highway rest stop (the only one in the country serving both cars and boats). While we could have easily transited the whole canal in a day, we are taking our time to enjoy the surroundings and we’ll write more about the canal once we’ve completed our journey.
