We first came to the Eastern Shore of Virginia in 1968. To save what was then a $5 toll fee across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, we drove to all the way to Annapolis and came down Rt. 13. Five bucks was a lot of money back then, but it was about an 8 hour drive. We’ll never do that again. During our stay, we camped in a tent at Tom’s Cove on Chincoteague Island. We slept on the ground in sleeping bags and were served up as mosquito food for two days. It’s a wonder we ever came back, but we did.
In 1975, I bought a tiny pop-up camper, which meant that if we camped, we wouldn’t have to sleep on the ground. If it rained, we wouldn’t get flooded, and if we zipped up the canopy securely, the mosquitos would have to seek protein somewhere else.
Nancy was working for Dr. Charles Manning, an Orthopedist, at the time and one of his patients suggested Cherrystone Campground just above Cheriton, about 15 miles north of the Bay Bridge Tunnel.
The first weekend of June, we went to Cherrystone. We caught flounder, we pulled in bushels of hard crabs, we scooped up soft shell crabs in the eel grass on low tide and the kids had a ball. For the next 32 years, we camped on the Eastern Shore, mostly at Cherrystone but sometimes at Inlet View at Chincoteague. When our last hard side camper died, we continued our trips to the Eastern Shore, but in recent years, we have stayed in hotels on the bay and in rental cottages and campers. It’s not quite like the old days, but we still have fun and we still get to go to the Eastern Shore when opportunities arise.
In fact, Nancy and I just returned from a lovely three day shore getaway and I’d like to share a little about our past experiences on the Eastern Shore and perhaps advise where to stay, what to do, where to eat and what to see.
Here goes.