May 11 – Portsmouth, VA

High St. Ferry Dock

“At the end of the day your feet should be dirty, your hair messy and your eyes sparkling.” –Shanti 

We decided to spend one more day in Portsmouth. We're only a day's run from Deltaville and our Monk Rendezvous doesn’t start until May 17. We've decided we'll go into the marina on Friday and pay for a week. We have quite a few things we can do on the boat before the get together starts.

Stan spent the morning talking to marinas that we may want to leave The Pearl next winter. We haven't made any definite decision, but we're getting closer. After lunch we rode around town reading more of the historical plaques and tried to imagine what it must have been like here 100-200 years ago. It was definitely a very busy place during WWI and WWII. Later in the afternoon we visited with David and Barbara from Miss My Money and several of the other boaters on the dock. Portsmouth has been a great spot to spend a few days and this free dock is very nice.

Portsmouth history:
Few cities have played as long or as important a role in America’s maritime and military history as Portsmouth. Strolling the streets of the city's six historic districts you'll walk in the footsteps of our country's colonial pioneers: the famous Captain John Smith, who first surveyed the land in 1608, Col. William Crawford, who founded the port city in 1752 and General Cornwallis, who made his revolutionary home at Portsmouth prior to his move to Yorktown. The town was named after the English naval port of the same name, and many of the streets in town reflect its English heritage. Portsmouth’s location as an East Coast deepwater port has played a big part in its development throughout the centuries. The Norfolk Naval Shipyard, established in 1787, is the nation's oldest and one of the largest shipyards. The Portsmouth Naval Hospital (now known as the U.S. Naval Medical Center, Portsmouth) was established in the 1830’s and is the Navy's oldest continuously operating medical hospital. 

Some of the homes in Olde Town are close together...you sure need to like your neighbors to live here.

This house was built in 1785

Looking across Crawford Bay to the Swimming Point neighborhood 

There was a lot of traffic on the Elizabeth River today...some ships were a little bigger than others