October/November 2021 Vacation Day 13 · · PAGE 43.

November 7, 2021:  Sunday afternoon continues the ride to our motel for tonight.

Less than a mile from our previous destination, the GPS pointed us to the road to the right at this intersection.  With the yellow center lines going that way to the south, it was obvious this is the correct route.  I was using the GPS in a wide enough map scale to see we would get to our next way points and our motel for tonight.  My older digital map has this one labeled as SR 610.  We are having a good BLUE LINE map experience that is a pleasant diversion from the interstate highways and the big trucks.

Less that 1.3 miles south on SR 610, it comes to an end at the intersection in front of Brown's Store.  They sell fuel and other stuff inside.  It reminds me of my maternal grandmother's store on Sand Mountain in Dade County, Georgia.  (That is another story from my youth that could bore you, the reader of this web page.)  Back to our route, we turned left here heading for Virginia route 200 about 3 miles east of this intersection.

Three miles to the east is where route 609 crosses Virginia state route 200 and Brown's Store Road has its eastern end.  We are going south from this intersection as seen below.

This is Wicomico Church located just south of the intersection of Route 609 on Route 200.  Any roads going EAST of route 200 will end at the waters and bays that are part of the Chesapeake Bay.  The path of route 200 keeps clear of those waters.

Less that eight miles south from Wicomico VA, route 200 crosses VA Route 3 which will take us four miles south from the intersection ahead to our Motel for tonight.

This town of Kilmarnock has its main businesses between the two state highway junctions where route 200 connects with route 3.

The Grace Episcopal Church is one-quarter of a mile south of the second intersection of VA 200 and VA route 3.

This is The Whispering Pines Motel on Virginia Route 3 less than 4 miles south of Kilmarnock.  It is a traditional Mom & Pop motel with clean rooms and a refrigerator that kept our snacks cold while our water bottles from our cooler bag were frozen solid for the journey tomorrow.  The TV had good reception while I used my computer to save my GPS tracks.  We arrived at the motel at 6:03 PM.  It was just starting to get dark

  October/November 2021 Vacation Day 14.

November 8, 2021:  Monday morning we go down to the Norfolk and Portsmouth area of Virginia to get fuel before we head into North Carolina.  We were packed and on the road from the Whispering Pines Motel at 8:44 AM.

Virginia Route 200 went west from Kilmarnock and circled around until it ended here in White Stone, Virginia just about half a mile south of the motel.  The route 3 sign needed some limbs and twigs removed that were hiding the numeral 3, so I cleaned it with some image editing.

Here is the end of route 200.  Route 695 runs EAST toward the end of this peninsula on the north side of the Rappahannock River where it meets Chesapeake Bay.  There is a town upstream on the south side of this river west of here with the name Tappahannock.  Native Americans originally named these places, just like where I grew up in north Georgia.

The bridge over the Rappahannock River begins just over half a mile from the intersection in White Stone seen in the image above. The length of the bridge is approximately 2 miles from shore to shore across the river.

The bridge was having maintenance done when the Google Earth camera vehicle passed this way in April 2018.

We came to the Junction of VA route 33 that comes from Richmond and continues East with Route 3.  The Junction was less that four miles from the south end of the bridge.  The road from here going East is coming down to a two-lane road.

These two highways run together only 3.4 miles until route 33 splits to the left here and runs to the end of the this peninsula at the Chesapeake Bay.  Route 3 turns south toward the next peninsula. 

While reviewing our route on this trip, I am using Google Earth as if I am flying over the terrain below.  When something gets my attention, I take a closer look using the Google Earth camera vehicle as my car at street level.  This is looking down at Virginia state route 3 with the junk yard hidden from view from the highway.  First Lady Rosalynn Carter got President Carter to get that regulation passed to "Beautify America".

Down at street level, the size of the salvage yard behind the office and garage is hidden from view.

When I looked at the street view in the image above, I spotted two vehicles from my past experiences.  The 1931 Ford is probably a Crown Victoria with a factory vinyl top.  A high school friend of mine found one in a barn near Chatsworth, Georgia in the 1960's and restored it, keeping the original engine.  The 1976 Ford station wagon has the "woody" option the California Surfers loved big time.  The 1976 Ford company car I drove had a light blue paint job without the woody trim.  I drove it all over the eight southern states when I was a company field engineer on the first job I had after I completed my three years in the US Army.

Southeastern Virginia has numerous rivers that create peninsulas as they get closer to the Chesapeake Bay.  The bridge ahead is higher in the middle to allow some boats to pass under.

We have reached the end of Virginia route 3 at the junction of US 17.  We will turn left to go south toward Norfolk and Portsmouth, VA.  We arrived here at 9:20 AM.