Day 8: July 6, 2017 Over & Under the Bay Comment via blog

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As stated on the cover page, driving the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel was the first thing added to the trip once I decided that this would be the year I'd make it to Common Ground on the Hill. My twenty mile crossing started at the southern toll plaza where $13 was snagged from my rarely used EZ-Pass. I was quickly on the first bridge. There is a man-made island at the end of the bridge where people can eat, buy souvenirs, go fishing, watch ships & boats, and contemplate the man-made island where the first tunnel emerges before driving into it.

What I called a bridge in the previous panel is more accurately referred to a low-level trestle. There's more between the tunnels and more beyond the second tunnel. There are also true bridges at the north end. If you spread the toll over the 17.6 miles that are over or under water or even the 20 miles between the toll plazas, it's a fairly pricey $0.74 or $0.65 per mile. But if you instead apply the toll to the nearly 500 miles involved in driving between those two points without the bridge/tunnel, it becomes a bargain 2 1/2 cents a mile.

Back on land, I stayed with US-13 and sometimes, but not always, followed the business route through a small town. One of those times was at the town of Exmore, Virginia, where the Exmore Diner has been in business since 1954. Hunger hadn't caught up with me yet but I did sip some iced tea at the counter of the properly tagged Silk City.

The sky ahead was looking increasingly dark and rain started within an hour of leaving Exmore. It stopped and restarted but never completely disappeared as I continued on to the day's end point in Newark, Delaware.

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