One Big Gun – OBX Part 2
Diana and I left a little later than we planned on the first leg of our five day spring break trip to Cape Hatteras. The first leg of the trip on April 8th was to Cape Charles, VA to visit overnight with Alan who is technically my brother’s father in law. My brother’s mother in law, Katie, was visiting with my brother and his family. We also decided to take the scenic route down to Dover before jumping on the expressways in order to ease into the riding pace and also enjoy a little scenery before battling speeding tractor trailers. Once we did get on the expressways we found it to be a terribly windy day making the ride a little challenging. We originally planned to arrive at the Eastern Shore of Virginia Wildlife Refuge where Alan works at 3:00pm but due to our slow start we arrived at 5:00pm. Since we have not put in any real riding as of late we were sore by the time we arrived. My left shoulder blade was not happy and Diana’s shoulders were in the same mood.
Alan is an awesome host! He had our favorite beer, Yuengling, cold and ready for our arrival. He also had a roast with carrots, potatoes and onions cooking in the crock pot for us all day. He made gravy and served us a meal that hit the spot dead on after a day of riding. After dinner Alan showed us his project over at the Cape Charles, VA rail road yard on the western bay side shore of the Delmarva Peninsula in historic Cape Charles. The sun was setting over the Chesapeake Bay and the view was awesome, but that wasn’t what he wanted to show us. Alan has been busy saving a WWII historic battleship gun barrel. The Navy had 8 of these they were going to destroy. Alan has been working to salvage one that will be on display at the Wildlife Refuge. This gun barrel is a 16″ diameter 50 caliber Mark VII from the USS Missouri. The gun barrel is 68′ long and weighs 120 tons. It cost a boatload of money to have a barge bring it over to Cape Charles and unload it in the rail yard. Alan needs to raise $70,000 by August to transport it a few miles to the Wildlife Refuge and display it properly.
We had a great time visiting with Alan in the wildlife refuge. We woke up late. Alan left hot coffee and cinnamon toast for us to eat for breakfast before he left for work. We geared up again and were just about to leave when Alan came by to see us off. His timing was perfect. 
It was about 10:00am as we rolled out of the park and directly onto the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel for the second leg of our trip.
