Virginia Beach - October 2016 - Day 3

October 1, 2016 (Saturday)

It started out as a very rainy morning.  We stopped by the grocery store to get some lunch food before heading north up the Atlantic coast. We took the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, which was quite unique. The Bridge Tunnel is 23 miles long! It is one of only ten bridge-tunnel systems in the world. Taking the Bridge Tunnel saves motorist 95 mile and about 1 ½ hours!

Since it was rainy, we just happened to be driving by the NASA missile launch facility visitor center – Wallops Flight Facility is the official name.  Wallops is NASA’s principal facility for management and implementation of suborbital research programs. It was free to go in and check out the exhibits.  We spent maybe 30 minutes to an hour there. 

Wild horse at Assateague Island National Seashore

Lighthouse at  Assateague Island National Seashore

Continuing north, we finally reached our first planned destination for the day – Assateague Island National Seashore – Toms Cove Visitor Center in Chincoteague Island, VA.  There is a $5 entrance fee – or free with pass. There were a ton of mosquitoes in the area.  Lucky for us, the rain pretty much stopped by the time we finished a quick lunch in the truck. On the drive to the visitor center, we did not see any wild horses, but on the way out we saw quite a few! The visitor center was relatively small with just a few displays (mostly aquatic life) and a book store area.  There was a guided walk that was about to start, but we opted not to go on it since we wanted to get to the other portion of the park (about an hour farther north).

Sunset from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge

Assateague Island National Seashore has a second visitor center in Maryland. There is an $8 entrance fee – or free with pass. We saw lots of wild horses at the Maryland location! We headed to the visitor center first. This visitor center was a lot larger and had more displays and the short video was worth the watch.  We visited the lighthouse, which provided lovely views.

After we got back to Virginia Beach, we had a quick meal at the hotel and then headed out to the boardwalk. It was a total coincidence that the Neptune Festival was going on during our visit. There were art exhibitors, beach volleyball tournaments, fireworks and a sand castle building contest. The fireworks lasted probably about 20 minutes and were okay.