Hey Look, a Skull!
April 18, 2025 — Day 13
Kiptopeke State Park, Cape Charles, VA
After we did some laundry we were ready for some adventure. It was too windy to kayak out to the Kiptopeke Breakwater, aka the concrete ships that form a barrier. We have the chops for it but we don’t like doing it. We took the kayaks down from the top of the Jeep then headed out to the Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge. We had been there 2 years ago and really enjoyed it. There is a long North — South trail, and it goes all the way down the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. We noodled around on the bikes a bit, but the trail down to the tip was closed.
We peddled up to the Visitor Center to see what birds had been recently seen and we also asked about the closed trail. It was closed because that is an important butterfly breeding area. The volunteer told us of another place just a few miles away that could give us a few miles of biking and get us a better marsh view.
When we left the Visitor Center we found that we had carefully locked up our bikes and left all the keys on the bike seat, yay for experienced travelers who really have the pulse of just what is going on!
We pedaled back to the Jeep and that’s where Paul discovered his keychain was missing. He remembered picking up the keys. Paul looked at his Phone. Keys were last seen 14 minutes ago. Well that’s curious they should be with him! After a quick bike load, sans chains and locks, we drove back to look around. They were not on the ground and weren’t turned in either. Weird. So Paul asked his iPhone to play a sound. We could barely hear it but there it was, they were in his knapsack but in the wrong pocket. Clearly we were tired and hungry. Mostly hungry. So we had the lunch we’d packed earlier.
We left to go to the trail the volunteer told us about. This is the corner of the Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge and the Magothy Bay Natural Area Reserve. They shared a small parking lot and they had different rules! Magothy allowed bikes, but Eastern doesn’t! We wanted to run the Magothy path anyways since that went down to the water.
Sorry for all the words above, biking means your phone is in your pocket, or in your backpack, you forget to take pictures. We promise to try and do better and will cheerfully refund your subscription fees if you feel we’ve lost our edge. :- )
The path was gorgeous! There were grassy fields, cool trees, and a dike which took you out to the marsh.
The winds on the dike were brutal, 20mph but thankfully without gusts. Susan says she didn’t notice any wind at all on her e-bike!
Here’s a shot of the boring side of the end of the dike.
Check out the lighthouses. They make them different down here.
Both of us forgot to take a photo of the good side of the dike. We were right on the water and there were a lot of birds. We watched Terns and Harriers hunt. There was a juvenile Bald Eagle sitting on a pole that stayed there for a good 15 minutes, and there were Egrets we couldn’t identify because Merlin wants insisted we download new Bird Packs, all 800MB of it, RIGHT NOW. Paul tried but gave up after he’d been at 0% for 20 minutes. We think we saw Willets also, but need to do some internet sleuthing first.
On the way back we took a side trail, that was through Eastern, not Magothy. We didn’t see any signs here say No Bikes so we had plausible deniability. Stopped at a small pond and watched other eagles, saw lots of small birds flitting about. (susan here: biking and birding are not a good mix. The biking flushes the birds out of their hides and the speed of biking makes it tough to actually see what’s there.)
Hey look, a skull!
Back at the Jeep we were barked at by big dog. He didn’t look happy we were here. We kept a wall of bike between him and us. And stood very quietly, basically signaling we’re no threat. He eventually came up to us, smelled Susan’s hand and allowed some head scratches and wandered off down the trail we’d just come off of. We’re both really glad we didn’t meet him on the trail!