Back on the road again.  Now that we are in total unfamiliar territory, we seem to be traveling less and literally forcing ourselves to move on.  Everything is so new and exciting, and just begs to be explored...We have so many miles to cover on this trip, and we know we cannot see and experience everything there is, so we have realized we need to think of this as a "fact finding mission" and "plot where we want to return"...

Not much new in scenery until we got onto the Scenic Byway from Richmond Virginia to Yorktown.

Lots of old Plantations, little Historic Towns.  As we drove outside of Willamsburg, we drove for several miles on a gorgeous tree-lined brick road, with many bridges like this.

Then it was into Yorktown, our first real beach.....we couldn't wait to get our sandals off and enjoy the feel of the ocean on our feet...

It was a very historic town, homes built in the late 1700s early 1800s.

From there it was just a short drive to our campsite at Fort Landing State Park, and miles and miles of beautiful sandy beaches.  We set up our spot for the night then off to beachcomb....

There are a lot of freighters that come in to get coal to ship to China, they dotted the ocean view

And we spotted these crazy big things that were washing up on shore and found out they are "horseshoe crabs".  After speaking with a local we found out some interesting stuff about them.  When there are plenty of these crabs in the water, the dolphins in the area are healthy and when they are scarce, the dolphins health is affected.

And even more interesting is that is that the horseshoe crab plays a vital, if little-known, role in the life of anyone who has received an injectable medication. An extract of the horseshoe crab's blood is used by the pharmaceutical and medical device industries to ensure that their products, e.g., intravenous drugs, vaccines, and medical devices, are free of bacterial contamination. No other test works as easily or reliably for this purpose.Very interesting.