More Virginia Beach

By day three in Virginia Beach I was getting a little frustrated with all of the missing boxes so I decided to focus on a series of boxes by Casa del Sol, all located in various libraries throughout the county.  The beauty and details and thought that were put into this series lifted my spirit and renewed my hope at finding more boxes.  I did manage to collect eight of these boxes and wished that I could have gotten the remaining few but time just ran out.  The ironic thing is that one of the boxes that I found had a stamp carved by my friend here in Pennsylvania, Pink Panther.  It was fun to see something familiar so far away.  One of the non letterboxing neat experiences that I had with this library series was the encounter with a group of blind people who were waiting with me for the library to open.  Those who know me, know that my daughter is blind, so it was interesting talking to this group of people who were gathering to use one of the meeting rooms in the library.  My daughter's guide dog had died a few years ago and she is in the process of working towards a new one since my grandchildren are older now and my daughter gets out and about more these days.  One of the men waiting had just gotten a beautiful new dog and he was very excited and proud of the job that the dog was doing for him.  It was fun to eavesdrop on the chatter and to be able to identify with their issues.

The picture below is of one of my other terrific non letterboxing experiences.  If I lived locally, I would be inclined to put a box in at this lotus pond.  I have never seen so many lotus plants in one location before, it was an awesome experience.

 After these boxes, I was hungry so I headed for one which was located at Grumpy's Bar and Grill.  Two funny things happened here.  First, one has to ask the bartender for the box and as she handed it to me, she asked me just what was going on with this box thing.  She wanted to see what was in it so I quickly explained the process and she was very intrigued.  She went on to tell me that she had just given the box to a man a couple of weeks prior to my visit but she didn't have the opportunity to get the information that she was curious about from him.  I had to laugh as I looked at the last finder of the box and saw that it had been another of my local letterboxing friends, Otis Friends.  It's a small world!  

Then, as I was stamping in, another patron came into the bar and the bartender asked him if he was coming to watch the Eagles game on Sunday.  That caught my attention since I am a big Eagles fan (yes, even with Michael Vick, I still root for the Eagles) so I asked her if she meant the Philadelphia Eagles.  She proudly told me that it was indeed the Philadelphia Eagles and that their bar had the third biggest Eagles fan club in the world.  Who wudda thunk that I would travel six hours from Philadelphia to find people who supported our own team.

I am not sure where I took the picture below but I thought it was neat to see all of the flowers on this cactus.  I have seen these in the deserts of Nevada but don't remember ever seeing one with this many flowers.  In fact, I have even grown one of these myself after bringing cuttings back from a visit to California and I never saw ANY flowers on it.   This one was very beautiful and I wish I would have gotten a closer picture of it.

 

Some of the boxes took me into Virginia Beach's center city.  I drove by this couple on the bench in search of a parking spot and when I got out of the car, I was rather surprised to see they were still kissing.  It took me a minute or two to realize that they were not real people. There was supposed to be a box near here but guess what...it was missing!  Luckily for me, there were two other boxes in the area.

  

My last stop on this day turned out to be a double stamp stop.  The Lynnhaven house is the home of a letterbox but it also has its own location stamp so I was able to get two for the price of one. I also was able to get a whole packet of patches and some more postcards!

 

When I got back to my hotel that evening, I was very disgruntled to find that I had to park in the satellite parking area which was two blocks from the hotel.  After spending the day walking, I wasn't upset at walking the two blocks but I was a bit nervous at walking back and forth past a homeless camp area.  The people there paid no attention to me at all but it just made me nervous.  I have to admit that I have never seen as many homeless people, even in New York City, as I saw in Virginia Beach.  Then when I got back to the hotel and I asked the desk clerk if there was any security checking on the cars in the satellite parking area which was in a rather run down residential neighborhood and she looked at me as though I was crazy, I wasn't feeling very confident that my car would be there the next morning.  As I made my way back to the  hotel, I had to laugh when I saw this sign because it exactly reflected how I was feeling. And my car was fine when I left the next day.

 The next morning was my last day at the beach and I was rather anxious to be on my way. I missed my little people and was ready to end my solitude but I decided to take a walk up to the beach to get one sunrise picture.  Unfortunately, it was very overcast and this was all I could get.

 My net result for my four and a half days in Virginia Beach was 33 new boxes found and about 20 not found.   The ticket I got for running a red light in Delaware on the way home was expensive.  The time alone was important to me and priceless.   The appreciation to be home again was invaluable.