Northern Neck Whirlwind Weekend
On Friday, July 1, we hit the road for the Northern Neck of Virginia, boats strapped to the rooftop of Betty Beluga, our cantankerous old mini-van. She, or rather her key fob, has recently gone haywire, causing her to do things like repeatedly open and close the back hatch, spontaneously lock herself, or make random beeping noises without our authorization. So we knew it was going to be a bit of a clown show when we pulled up to the Indian Creek Yacht and Country Club in Kilmarnock to unload our stuff, and we could only hope that no one would witness it. Luckily the solution is fairly simple, namely, put some distance and preferably a brick wall between the van and the fob.
Anyway, the yacht club was our first gig of the weekend. It was a pleasant evening and we played for the guests dining on the outdoor patio. Our setup looked like this (note the helpful brick wall):
We were up bright and early the next morning to play at the Irvington Farmers Market from 9:30 am till 12:30 pm. Beautiful day, and a market packed with vendors of everything from fruits and veggies to artwork, rustic furniture, and jewelry. There were loads of people wandering around, and many came to stand in front of the gazebo or sit on the steps to listen to our music. A couple from the yacht club dinner swung by to say hello. One guy even requested my original song, "Corner of the Garden."
We grabbed a quick lunch at The Local in Irvington, spent some time at the pool back at our hotel in Kilmarnock, AND lined up another last-minute gig for July 4, before heading to our second gig of the day at Route 30 BBQ and Grille. This was a little over an hour away in King William, not on the Northern Neck. We had just picked up this gig on Tuesday, and were happy to add it to the itinerary even though playing two gigs in one day is exhausting! John thought about playing electric instead of upright bass for this one, but then one of the waitstaff expressed his excitement about the upright so we couldn't let him down.
We played 3 sets here, then had dinner on the house. The food was delicious all around, but special praise is reserved for the onion rings which were the best either of us has ever had. Even though we were only about a half hour from home, we had kept our hotel room in Kilmarnock, and drove back there because we wanted to spend our day off out there. We really did need a full day off at this point!
We started Sunday morning off by splurging on brunch at the Kilmarnock Inn.
Then we went for paddle in Mathews.
When we got off the water we had a late, light lunch at the White Dog Bistro (also in Mathews). I don't normally take food pictures, but I thought the presentation of this wedge salad deserved one. The flavor was also rave-worthy.
In the afternoon, we went to Bethel Beach Natural Area Preserve. Neither of us took a phone out so there are no pictures other than this aerial image I grabbed from Google maps.
It was EXTREMELY windy, and the Chesapeake Bay waters were wild, but there was a little cove somewhat sheltered from the wind where we considered swimming until I sank one leg nearly up to the knee in the black, sticky muck. After John extracted me, we walked quite a ways along the beach until it curled around to the west, and kept going. The water was much calmer here, and we started wading out. The water was perfect. The weather was perfect. It was all simply perfect until I sliced my feet on an invisible oyster reef, and hobbled back to shore cursing all the way!
Beach swimming counted as a loss at this point, so we went back to the hotel pool for a bit before going out to dinner. Alright, so there's a little bit of a splurging/foodie theme going on here, since we had dinner at Merroir, which has a lovely casual atmosphere and good food and drink, but is not light on the wallet. The setting overlooking a little harbor and the Rappahannock River was gorgeous with the sun setting, and some early fireworks going off. After dinner we walked around the docks in the increasing darkness before heading back to the hotel.
On Monday, the 4th of July, we had the early part of the day to explore the area. We started off in the direction of Dameron Marsh, stopping to check out the historic Shiloh School on the way.
Dameron Marsh Natural Area Preserve was beautiful, but we didn't stay because of pesky biting flies.
We tried to go to the nearby Hughlett Point Natural Area Preserve, but the parking lot was full. Then we tried to go to the little beach at Horn Harbor Restaurant, but the restaurant was closed and so was the gate on the road leading to the beach. So at that point we decided to just go early to Willaby's on the Rappahannock, the location of our final gig for the long weekend. There we finally got in some real beach time!
We had over an hour of quality swimming and sunning time before we had to set up to play. For this beach gig, we used a much simpler setup than usual, with John on electric instead of upright bass, only guitar (no piano) for me, and foregoing the big mixer to save space. (Photo immediately below courtesy of our new pal Mike.)
We had a blast playing for a great group of people. Extra bonus was being able to swim not only before and after the gig, but even during the break between sets. We had originally planned to drive on home that night, but that would have sucked. So we booked another motel room, just 4 minutes away, so that we could stay and enjoy the rest of the evening. After we finished playing and packing up our gear, we ordered smashburgers and fries for dinner, and stayed on the beach to watch the sunset and then to enjoy the performance of a fire dancer -- a fantastic end to a fantastic long holiday weekend.
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