Kittyhawk, NC

May 2000

After completing the project I worked on in Pensylvania I ended up travelling to Singapore quite a bit for some project work there. At the end of May we put our household effects in storage for a longer term stint in Singapre. This trip was the last decent sized trip I would do on my still fairly new R1100GS.

Sanet and I decided to do a ride down to Kittyhawk, NC for the weekend to go and have a look at the place where the Wright brothers undertook their first flight.

We started off early on the Satruday morning and headed down I-76 towards Philadelphia, we turned off I-76 onto I-476 which would connect us with I-95. We followed I-95 to just past Wilmington, DE after which we turned off on to Highway 13 in Delaware.

We followed Highway 13 all the way down to the Chessapeak bay bridge, this is quite an impressive structure containing a combination of man-made islands, bridges and tunnels that span the entrance to the Chessapeak bay for a distance of approximately 20 miles.

As with most trips we did at the time we did not spend a lot of time planning, we pretty much decided on a destination and hopped on the bike, we did not spend a lot of thought on finding accomodation and pretty much dealt with it along the way. We made it all the way to Kittyhawk just in time to still make it into the historical site and get some photographs before they shut the gates. All I can say about it is that it's pretty much a bunc of Sand dunes with a historical monument on top of it. The town of Kittyhawk is more of a holiday deistination on the outer banks of North Carolina with not much else happening..

After we visited the site we figured we would ride back to Virginia beach and find accomodation for the night, this time of year the sun was up pretty late so we could still get a fair bit of riding in during daylight.

This was the second trip where poor planning made finding accomodation a problem. Once we got back to Virginia beach we found that it was next to impossible to find a room - even in some of the pricier establishments. We decided to keep on heading north just in case we do not find accomodation - at leat we'll be closer to home and if we have to we'll ride all the way home.

Our next stop was just after we crossed back over the Chessapeak bay bridge at the Best Western Cape Charles, VA - but we were out of luck, they had just handed the keys to their last available room to a couple that beat us to the door. We mounted up again and started heading further north. One thing that was a bit of a concern at the time was an approaching storm front that was closing in from the west and the associated tornado warnings that came with it - I did not look forward to the prospect of riding at night in a downpour, even less appealing was the possibility of encountering a twister on a motorcycle, just not a good idea to start off with.

In Salisbury, MD we stopped at another hotel here they informed us that we would be very lucky to find a room since most of the eastern shore was booked out. The chap behind the counter was kind enough to make a few phonecalls to see if he could find us a place to bunk for the night. As luck would have it there was still room available at a little motel up the road called "The Captain's Quarters". The place was run by two old girls and they would wait up for us - it was now pretty close to midnight and we really didn't care much about finding food or the likes.

The place wouldn't rate as one of my most favorite establishments, but it did provide a warm dry bed for the night. The storm passed over during the night without one drop hitting the ground. The next morning we suited up pretty early and made for home. An interesting trip overall.with a total trip distance of just over 800 miles we ended up covering over 600 miles during the first day.