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22 minute read

June 12, 2024, 8:24 AM

From May 30 to June 1, I took a trip down to the Hampton Roads area in Virginia.  Hampton Roads is by no means an unfamiliar place, even though I don’t get to go there nearly as much as I would otherwise like, but the way I got down there was a bit unconventional.  Instead of going down the west side of the Beltway to I-95 in Springfield heading towards Richmond and then hanging a left on I-64 to go through New Kent, Williamsburg, and the like to get to my hotel in Newport News, I instead went down the east side of the Beltway to New Carrollton, where I got on Route 50 and took that over the Bay Bridge and then continued as far as Salisbury, where I made a right turn at US 13 to head down into Virginia towards the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.  From there, I headed through Norfolk, through the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, through Hampton, and finally to my hotel in Newport News.  I was also doing this trip completely unsupervised, as Elyse was going to a bus event up in Hershey that same weekend.

I made a few stops along the way, mostly to do some photography with the drone.  My first stop was at a large park on the east side of the Bay Bridge, where I was planning to get some shots of the bridge itself:

That’s about as well as I could do.  It was a further distance to the truss sections of the bridge than i had anticipated, and my signal started to run out on me before I got there.  That top photo is about as well as I could do.  The moral of the story is that while this might still be a good photo idea, the execution here was kind of a loser, so I need to rethink this and try again.

Meanwhile, before I landed, I also got a couple of miscellaneous shots.

Water tower near my location.  From this low angle, I thought it kind of looked like a mushroom.

Overhead selfie.

I admit that I had high hopes for this one, and I was disappointed that it didn’t work out.  Fortunately, I didn’t make a special trip out here for a bad idea – this was just a small 30-minute side adventure.

My next stop was a quickie on the side of the road, to get photos of the signage for the eastern US 50/US 301 split in Queenstown:

Funny how so many people questioned why I was pulled over on the side of the road in the first place.  I was surprised how some people couldn’t believe that I pulled over just to get a photograph.  I was like, no, I really pulled over just to get the photo.  Seriously, here’s the HR-V during the stop:

See?  She’s fine, waiting patiently for me to return and continue the trip.

And then after I got the shot, it was back to the road.  My next stop was at the intersection of US 50 and MD 213 in Wye Mills, where I got an intersection and a Long Lines tower:

Intersection of US 50 (top left to bottom right) and MD 213 (bottom left to top right).

AT&T Long Lines Wye Mills site.

And then I was off once again.  Next stop was one that Elyse called about and asked me to do.  I wasn’t originally planning to stop in Easton, but I was right there, plus the target that Elyse requested was a Thunderbolt siren.  I have a soft spot for Thunderbolds, as they remind me of childhood in Rogers, Arkansas, because they were all over the city at that time.  So I made a small detour to the Easton Volunteer Fire Department and got these:

Federal Signal Thunderbolt 1003.

Fedelcode Type 5.

I’d dare say that I got a better shot of the Fedelcode without really trying than of the Thunderbolt, where I orbited around the whole thing and took a bunch of shots.  The Fedelcode was an afterthought, i.e. might as well photograph it while I’m here.  Funny how that works out.

Next stop was a quick one at, of all places, my bank.  I had to kick some funds around on my various accounts and was going to call them to take care of it later on, and then I rolled right on past a branch that I didn’t know about.  Well, cool.  I stopped in and I took care of it on the spot.  That worked out nicely.  Turned out that they had just opened, so they weren’t there the last time I had gone through that area.

My next stop was in Cambridge, where I dipped into Sailwinds Park.  There, I wanted to photograph the bridge over the Choptank River.  The US 50 bridge was kind of “meh” at best.  Here it is:

Yep.  There it is.  Looks like a modern bridge.  What I found more interesting was when I started buzzing around the previous bridge:

The old bridge had been cut in two to allow for boat traffic to pass by following its replacement, and both sides became fishing pier, now known as Bill Burton Fishing Pier State Park.  I don’t know who would want to walk all the way out to the middle (it’s about half a mile on the south side, and about nine-tenths of a mile on the north side), but it exists.  I also found these structures interesting:

There were several of these structures in the water around the area where boats are supposed to pass through.  I suspect that these are there to protect against collisions with the bridge, i.e. to prevent a similar incident to what happened up in Baltimore with the Key Bridge from occurring here.

This was my last stop until I got to Salisbury, where I had lunch at Cook Out.  After this, I was in new territory, as I had never gone south beyond Salisbury before.  Following this route, I made a quick stop to photograph a water tower at Eastern Shore Forest Products in Pocomoke City:

Not bad.  I also got this shadowy looking photo of the HR-V at this location with the DSLR:

My trusted steed for this journey.

And then I continued on.  This leg of the journey also marked a milestone for me, as it meant that I had now visited all 23 counties in Maryland.  Prior to this, the only one that I had been missing was Somerset County, and this took me right through it.  I had never had any reason to go to Somerset County before, and it’s understandable enough, because there’s not a whole lot there.  Other than a Sysco store that Elyse wants me to take her to (and I want to go, too), there’s really not much out there to do other than just drive through.  But now I can check it off of my list, and it makes Maryland the only state where I have visited every single county.  In the future, I want to add Delaware to that list, as I’ve been to two out of Delaware’s three counties.  I’ve been to New Castle County because I cross through it whenever I go up to New Jersey or Pennsylvania on I-95, and then I do Sussex County whenever I go to Rehoboth.  Kent County is the one in the middle, and I will get that one whenever Elyse and I decide to do that Delaware road trip that we’ve been discussing, where we go out to Ocean City and then drive up either US 13 or Delaware Route 1 and visit Dover, among other cities, and ultimately end up in Wilmington before returning home (or we could run it southbound from Wilmington to Rehoboth).

I also investigated two fire watch towers for Evan Stone, whom I would be visiting later in the day.  One location was in Maryland, on Frey Drive in Westover.  I looked all over for that one, but unfortunately, I came up empty-handed.  I couldn’t find the fire tower, and reported back as much.  Oh, well.  I figure that the tower was either gone (as in demolished), or Evan had given me inaccurate information.  Whatever the case may have been, I wasn’t concerned, because the side trip to find nothing only took me five minutes, and after that, I was back on the road.

Not long after this, I crossed into Virginia, and made a quick stop at a rest area and welcome center along US 13 just over the state line.  I had no idea that Virginia had rest areas that weren’t on an Interstate highway, though from what I can tell, this is the only off-Interstate rest area in the state.  I then continued through Accomack and Northampton Counties.  Those counties, at least the parts that I saw, were pretty dull.  The land is flat, there are few businesses, and the road is relatively straight.

I continued until I got to Birdsnest (a town so insignificant that its Wikipedia entry is only three sentences long), where the other fire tower was supposed to be.  Fortunately, this one, unlike the one in Somerset County, was very visible from the main road.  So I stopped and got some photos of it.  Right away, I knew that there was no way that I was going up this one (not that I was planning to anyway), because this is what greeted me at the bottom:

Yep… the base is completely overgrown.  Not going anywhere near that.

Then I sent the drone up and got a few shots:

And then I got back in the car and continued on.  This was to be my last stop until I got to my hotel, but the main reason for this routing was still to come: the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.  I had never gone over this one before, simply because I had no reason to, so this routing was done to deliberately give me a reason to go over it.  And let me tell you… Elyse was salty when she found out that I was going over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel without her.  So expect to see me go over the bridge again in the future with Elyse.  It was a nice bridge, though the fishing pier on one of the islands is closed due to a construction project on the bridge, which meant that I had to do the entire 17-mile length nonstop, i.e. no photo stop for me.  I did, however, get this quick photo of the sunset:

The bridge-tunnel deposited me in Virginia Beach, which surprised me, because for some reason, I thought that it ended in Norfolk.  But regardless, I got on I-64, and got hung up in traffic going through the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel due to construction.  Lovely.  But at least I got a few shots while I was creeping through:

And then from there, the rest of the trip was uneventful, as I got to my hotel, the Hampton Inn on Jefferson Avenue, just before 10:30 PM.  This was a different Hampton Inn than my last stay in Newport News in 2021, because I will never stay at that other Hampton Inn ever again after my experience there.  Fortunately, the Hampton Inn that I was staying at this time, while having a somewhat odd layout (but one that I have experienced before), was just fine, and I would stay there again.

Then Aaron and Evan came over, we got something to eat, and then we all went over to their house for a while.  I got back to the hotel around 1 AM.  Not bad.  The route that I took to get over there was a lot longer than I would otherwise ever want to take to get out there, but it was a productive ride.

The next day, we got together around 9 AM, and we were off.  First stop was the Hampton Coliseum, where I got a few aerials of the building:

I especially loved the top-down shot of the Coliseum.  I loved the little button in the middle, plus when viewed from above, I couldn’t help but think that it kind of looked like a pie.

We then went to Superblock Park in Newport News, where we had three drones up in the air, as I had my DJI Air 3, Evan had his Air 2, and Aaron, who had just recently gotten his drone license, flew my Air 2S.  The view of downtown Newport News was okay, but I quickly found that it was more interesting over the water.

River Park Tower Apartments.  I had previously photographed this building from the ground in 2021.

Oceanside Tower, another apartment building.

Going over the water, I photographed a small flotilla going up the James River consisting of the Eastern Branch, a pusher tug, which was lashed the Scott’s Creek, a crane barge.  Those two were later joined by the Charleston, which is another small tug that came up alongside.

Our next stop was at a breakwater that was also in use as a fishing pier, that created a small harbor.  There, our goal was to photograph the two islands of the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel.  I also photographed a few other things while I was up there.

North portal island of the MMMBT.

South portal island of the MMMBT, and the long bridge to land beyond it.

Newport News Middle Ground Light, not far off of the MMMBT south portal island.

A barge just off the breakwater, with a crane on board and the Excellence alongside.  I have no idea what they were doing, but the barge contained shipping containers and a large pipe on deck.

Finishing here, we got in the car and rode across the MMMBT to the Kroger Marketplace in Suffolk.  We needed a photography break, and also needed to figure out what we were going to do next.  We were also a bit hungry.  We didn’t get lunch here, and we stopped into a Zaxby’s but found nothing worth getting.  We ended up piling back into the car and going to a Jason’s Deli in Chesapeake, where we had our lunch.

I was, however, amused by this sign for their Alamo wrap:

Yeah, I know it’s just the way that it’s sitting in the frame, but I totally read that as “ALAMU WRAP”.  I ended up getting this, and it was actually quite good.

After lunch, we took the drone up around some office buildings, specifically the corporate headquarters for Dollar Tree:

Dollar Tree headquarters building.

Close-up of the sign on the Dollar Tree headquarters building.

Dollar Tree distribution center right next to the headquarters building.

Then I also flew another nearby office park while I was up in the air:

Finishing up here, we went to the nearby Greenbrier Mall to check it out.  First thing that I did was to orbit around the mall with the drone and get some aerial shots of it:

Then we went in.  I quickly got the sense that while Greenbrier Mall was definitely past its prime, it was doing well enough with lots of store spaces occupied by small businesses or nontraditional tenants.  And of the four anchor spaces, only the space formerly occupied by Sears was vacant.  I’d say that’s pretty good right there.

Escalators in front of the former Sears store.  The mall had a decent amount of foot traffic, as I had to wait a long time to get this (almost) clear shot of the escalators.

Sage Beauty Lounge in what is clearly a former Regis salon.

JGJ Watch & Jewelry Repair in a former Ritz Camera store, still in the same colors and with the neon “one hour photo” sign still intact.

I found this rather curious.  JCPenney had this little table set up in front of their mall entrance, with this little stack of “mini-applications” where you list your name, availability, and contact information, and then put it in the box.  It also contained a QR code to go and apply online afterward.  I couldn’t help but question what the point of the mini-application was if I had to go online and apply there anyway.

While we were here, I also got Aaron to shoot a photo of me for the website for June:

The outfit that I am wearing, consisting of the colors of the asexual flag, was absolutely done on purpose.  June is Pride Month, and while I am definitely not gay, I do identify as asexual, which is something that I’ve come to recognize and accept about myself over the last year or so.  This splash photo is my way of publicly embracing it, though I’m not that loud about it.  After all, let’s admit: what I do (or don’t do) in the bedroom is nobody’s business but my own.  (And if you are wondering where I got the ace leggings and hoodie, they came from Changemaker Clothing on Etsy.)

That was it for the mall, so we piled back into the car and continued on.  We ended up finding ourself at a recently closed Bon Secours hospital campus in Norfolk, and we put our various drones up in the air there.  I really wasn’t feeling this one, and my photos showed it, as this was the only half decent shot that I got of the hospital:

And note that even this photo kinda sucks.  It was starting to get late in the day, and so the lighting was no longer favorable, with a lot of long shadows on things.  We also had something of a drone emergency while we were there, as Aaron somehow initiated a landing of the Air 2S, and then it descended and went out of range in the process.  And on top of that, the phone that was attached to the 2S remote was nearly dead.  Lovely.  So I attached a different phone to the remote, pulled up the “find my drone” function on the app, and located it.  As it turned out, the 2S landed on the other side of the hospital from where we were, but it had come down in a fenced-off area.  Fortunately, it had landed on flat pavement and it was still powered up, so the only problem was that it was behind the fence.  My first reaction was, “Give me the remote,” and I initiated a launch command.  It took off, so I just flew it out of there and over to where we were, and then landed it next to where we were standing.  Good deal.  No one quite figured out how Aaron initiated the landing like that, but at least it was an easy situation to get us out of.  Especially fortunate for Aaron, because if for whatever reason I was unable to fly it out, he was going in to retrieve it, which would have included getting past those fences.

After we retrieved the drone, we were done at the former hospital.  I’m not going to lie: having to rescue a drone kind of soured me on doing any further flights there, at least for this session.  We then headed over to the Granby Street Bridge, where we walked down to one end and back.  Aaron and Evan wanted to go down to the fishing pier underneath the bridge, but upon seeing some sketchy activity going on down there, they retreated, and warned me not to go down there myself.

However, I did get a good view of the sunset from the bridge:

From there, we headed back to Newport News, because Evan needed to get to bed on account of an early job the next day with his pressure washing business.  We spent a little bit of time at their house, and then Aaron and I went out again later.  We had considered going back out to Hampton and beyond, but it felt like it would take too long, and things needed to wind down anyway.  We got dinner at Cook Out, and then went down and drove across the James River Bridge and back.  We then came back to my hotel, where Aaron retrieved his car, and that was my night.  The rest of the evening was spent downloading photos off of memory cards, and recharging drones and cameras.

I also learned one thing about charging: my Jackery power box will drain quickly when trying to charge three sets of drone batteries simultaneously, even when plugged into the car outlet.  I usually bring the Jackery box with me on these sorts of trips in order to recharge in the field, but this time, I asked too much of it, and very quickly drained it down to zero with that much load on it.  Lesson learned, and if I’m ever in this situation again, I’m definitely bringing the real power cord with me and topping it up with that during meals.

On Saturday, my final day in Hampton Roads, I got a nice, slow start.  I was meeting up with my friend Travis Doucette at noon for lunch at Peninsula Town Center, but I had nothing major going on before that.  I checked out of my hotel room just before 11:00, and with some time to work with, I ended up doing a drone flight over Patrick Henry Mall.  Owing to flight restrictions due to the proximity to Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport, I wasn’t able to do a full orbit around the mall like I usually do, but I could maneuver enough to get what I wanted to get.  Here it is:

Not bad.  It’s your typical T-shaped single-level suburban mall with four anchor spaces.  Then as I was coming back to land, I noticed the shape of the facade on the Michaels store.  It looked familiar:

It took me a second, and then it clicked: this was a former HHGregg store.  Street View confirms this, and also revealed that it was a Circuit City before it was HHGregg.  HHGregg should probably be a cautionary tale for any retailer.  They were a longstanding regional brand in the midwest, and then began to expand into the eastern and southern US after Circuit City went under in 2009, largely opening these new locations in former Circuit City spaces.  And then eight years later, they also went under, just like Circuit City, likely due to overexpansion.  I suppose it shows that some businesses go under for a reason, and that when you jump in to fill that void, you might end up suffering the same fate.

Lunch with Travis, meanwhile, was amazing.  I’ve known Travis for about 25 years, and this is the first time we actually met up.  Great lunch, and great conversation, discussing our shared interest in Today’s Special, among other things.  We got a selfie together afterward:

Hopefully we can get together again next time I’m in Hampton Roads.

Finishing up there, I moved to another nearby shopping center (i.e. one without any rented security guards with an overinflated sense of self importance and a lack of knowledge about drone laws who might see me flying my drone and annoy me) and sent the drone up in the area:

Orbiting around Peninsula Town Center.  In hindsight, I feel as though my orbit was a bit too cautious, and too conservative, because it covered a lot of distance, but didn’t get much of any detail.  Though it still feels weird to see this vs. the mall that used to be here.

Looking southeast down Coliseum Drive.

I parked a couple of spaces over from this van, and as I was getting ready to land, I noticed the logo on the door, and that it was similar to that of the Greater Richmond Transit Company (GRTC) in Richmond, and that it included GRTC contact information.  I saw this and thought, “Does seeing this van count as fanning GRTC?”  That got some laughs when I posted this photo along with my thought as a caption.

After landing, I got on I-64 and headed west.  My next stop would be in Williamsburg, where I got off the highway and followed US 60 for some distance.  Much to my surprise, my route took me through Colonial Williamsburg.  I suppose that it looked nice enough, and I was surprised that cars were allowed that close to things, but I didn’t stop to explore further.  My first Williamsburg stop was in front of Williamsburg Baptist Church, where I took some conventional and drone photography in the area.

Williamsburg Baptist Church, photographed from the ground.

Aerial view of Williamsburg Baptist Church.

Aerial view of the football stadium at William & Mary.  I seem to remember that this was natural grass turf when I toured the campus as a prospective student back in 1998, though it’s very possible that I was looking at something else or am otherwise not remembering correctly (sports facilities were very low on my list of things when I was looking at schools).

Then while I was getting ready to put away my equipment and move on, a squatted truck rolled up across from me.  I pretended like I didn’t notice them, and kept on with things, and paid attention to the fact that they had parked and then left.  Once they were out of sight, I leapt into action, and captured their squatted truck:

The truck, with the front of it a lot higher than the rear.  The “LEAN1N” license plate makes me think that this guy knew exactly what he was doing with this aftermarket modification.

Meanwhile, I’m kind of surprised that he still gets away with having it, since squatted trucks have been illegal in Virginia for about two years at this point.  Personally, I think that squatted trucks make the owners look like idiots.

Then I continued on, following US 60 westward.  I was looking for converted buildings to photograph that I had not done already.  I found this one, a bit to the west of things:

This is The Smokey Griddle Pancake House, i.e. one of several zillion pancake restaurants that exist in Williamsburg, but this one is housed in a former Dairy Queen building.

That was it for Williamsburg as far as I was concerned.  All I really wanted to do was just a quick pass-through to see what looked interesting, and I did it.  I continued on Route 60 for a while further, and then I had a “lightbulb” moment: I wanted to see the presidential heads that have gotten so much press over the years.  This would be a drone mission, because they were on an industrial site that I wasn’t comfortable digging around in.  So I found a spot on a public road nearby, and went up for a look:

There they are.  I am content, having now seen them.

Then I got on I-64, and I was off.  When I planned this trip, I had anticipated stopping in Richmond, but had no real idea about what I was going to do in Richmond.  That ended up being “no stop”, as I just took the big right turn to head north on 95 and kept it moving.  Richmond will still be there next time, and with no real plan, I would have been wandering around somewhat aimlessly, and that would have shown in the results.  In other words, skipping Richmond was okay.  The closest thing to a Richmond stop was the Sheetz at the Atlee exit (in Hanover County), and that was just for a potty break and to refill my water bottle.

My next stop was at the Thornburg exit.  Here, there was a lot of road construction going on, and so I wanted to get some photos of stuff.  They were widening Mudd Tavern Road, and also building another new road behind the commercial area.  Plus I wanted to get some general aerial shots of the area.

Traffic circle along the new route 2092.

The new Route 2092 (with the blue sides) and the way it interacts with US 1.  Mudd Tavern Road is to the left.

The Best Western.  I had previously photographed this building in 2014, when it was in a state of limbo.  It had been mostly constructed, but then work stopped when the owners ran out of money, and it sat in that state for years.  It was finally completed in 2016, and has been in operation ever since.  I think that I was surprised that it was actually completed as a Best Western.  Yes, this is Best Western’s standard architecture, but with the various ownership changes, I halfway expected that it would have opened up under a different brand.

Tall road sign for the McDonald’s in Thornburg.

“Spotsylvania: Gateway to Lake Anna” water tower.

Thornburg interchange on I-95.  The northbound side had been redesigned in the late 2010s to what you see here, while it previously was a more conventional diamond design.

And that was it as far as the photography went.  From there, my next goal was to go grocery shopping.  I hit up the Publix and the Walmart in the Massaponax area, and got a few things that I needed at home.  Aaron Stone gave me a call on the way to Massaponax, and we chatted for the rest of the way home.  After shopping, I took Route 1 through Fredericksburg, and then rejoined I-95.  I made my way to the express lanes, and just cruised right on back to the DC area, taking the express lanes on 95 and the Beltway all the way to Maryland.  I made excellent time going home, and made it back just after 10 PM.  It was nice to have actual, useful time after a trip, rather than getting home super late and then just having to crawl straight into bed.  And I did something that I never thought I would do, running a trip to Hampton Roads as a loop rather than going the same way out and back.

Meanwhile, I need to get down to Hampton Roads far more often than every few years.  I had a lot of fun, and there are lots of people down there that I want to see more often.

Categories: Friends, Hampton Roads, Maryland, Photography, Roads, Today's Special