264

This is a shot I've been trying to get almost since Clyde arrived. Interstate 264 only runs from the Virginia Beach Oceanfront to the far side of Portsmouth, so it's very local! And I drive on it at least once a week, but most of the signs are not placed in such a way as to encourage stopping to take a photo safely. But I found this one by the sidewalk on the Oceanfront end!

Also nearby was the sign at the entrance to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA, formerly CAC - Contemporary Art Center):

And the reason we were at the Oceanfront was to pay the catering deposit for the wedding, which means a visit to the Aquarium! And their new exhibit (and IMAX movie) is all about butterflies...

...so there's a giant one on the side of the building! Cool.

Oceanfront

The North American Sand Soccer Championships are this weekend! Which is unfortunate, given the rainy weather Tropical Storm Andrea has bestowed upon us. But it should be okay, as long as there's no lightning.

My family's company does the signs for the NASSC every year, so we get invited to their vendor/VIP kick-off event. I've never been, so I went this year.

They have something like 60 fields set up on the beach, but there's one big one for the semifinals and finals:

The giant pile of sand is, as I understand it, partly a buffer from the wind off the ocean and partly a place for more people to sit. (Clyde is blocking the bleachers that are pushed up against the boardwalk - which in VB is not made of boards - which we're standing on.)

While we were at the oceanfront, we took a stroll and got photos with some of the neat things there...

This anchor is on display in front of the Old Coast Guard Station

A public art installation on one of the little sidewalks between
Atlantic Ave (which runs parallel to the shoreline) and the boardwalk

More of the fish art, but facing the boardwalk this time

Another beach art installation a few blocks down from the fish

King Neptune! We are home to the Neptune Festival, and this statue
was built in 2005 in honor of some of the Kings of the festival.
That's a sea turtle under the King's left hand, and rays behind Clyde

The Norwegian Lady. In 1891, a badly damaged Norwegian ship ran aground
on a sand bar off our shore. Some VB men (in what is now the Coast Guard) braved the
raging storm to rescue the crew (they saved 8 of the 17 men).
A young boy walking on the beach found their figurehead washed ashore.
She was set up on the oceanfront as a memorial for the crew members who died.
For 60 years, she stood there, but Hurricane Barbara (in 1953) damaged her
beyond repair and she was removed. The Norwegian Shipping Association
(in Norway) heard about it and built two statues: one came here and took
the original figurehead's place, and the other stands in Moss, Norway.
Queen Sonja of Norway came here in 1995 to lay flowers at the Lady's feet.
We have sent Virginia Beach delegation to Norway to do the same.

Speaking of shipwrecks, this is some debris from another one,
displayed outside the Old Coast Guard Station

This teeny tiny octopus "statue" is on the boardwalk railing
right next to the King Neptune statue.
He's my favorite little piece of public art in the whole city!

While I was standing next to King Neptune, I had several couples ask me to take their photo with him! They usually stand under the sea turtle because it gives you a great sense of proportion. (The King stands 34 feet tall!) They all were really apologetic but I told them, that's what I get for standing near the most impressive statue at the beach!

Finally, I took a video of Clyde with the waves. See, we don't get real waves here. We have lots of surfers, but they can't do much with what we get, unless there's a hurricane (in which case, they still can't do very much because lifeguards and police tell them to come ashore). So these are pretty impressive, for us:

Mount Trashmore

This is where I wanted to go for the "high places" challenge: the highest point in Virginia Beach... Mount Trashmore!

View from the top, facing Town Center; you can also see I-264 running left-to-right

It's 60 feet high, which is sort of embarrassing to have as the highest point in a city, but our average elevation above sea level is 12 feet. The fence behind Clyde in the photo above encircles a giant state seal (which is REALLY hard to get a good photo of, because it's on the slope and surrounded by bushes).

Looking out at Lake Trashmore off the other side

There's a kids' play area called Kids Cove, and a skate park, and another smaller hill (I think it's called Mount Encore or Encore Hill or something like that). There are also lots of running/walking/biking trails that wind around the park.

There were some people flying kites at the top!
There were also people having picnics and jogging with dogs and whatnot.

Mount Trashmore was opened in 1974, and it is what it sounds like: a landfill. In 1992 they reported that there was a dangerous buildup of methane gas and it could cause a fiery explosion, but that was apparently fixed, since here we are in 2013 still walking around on it.

Looking down the stairs

The last time I went to Mount Trashmore was with my last Little Visitor, Peanut Butter... It was something like 30 degrees that day. Today, it's a little over double that, somewhere in the 60s... MUCH better!

Dolphins

Not real dolphins, mind you. Despite the fact that we have dolphin tours at the beach here, I have never seen a dolphin in the water. Then again, I've never been on a dolphin tour... But I digress.

Several years ago, the city of Norfolk decided to start putting up mermaids everywhere. Apparently some other city was doing this with their own mascot, and it was becoming trendy. Local artists decorate the mermaid blanks (approximately life-size, posed in the way they are in the city's logo) to be put up all over the city. For example, they painted one to look like she was wearing a Norfolk Admirals hockey jersey, put a helmet on her, and put her in the Norfolk Scope, where they played.

Virginia Beach got in on the action by doing the same thing, but with dolphins. Personally, I think the mermaids were a much bigger deal, and the dolphins looked kind of like an afterthought, but they're still all over the place.

TCC (the school I'm a librarian at) has their very own dolphin on campus, and Clyde hopped up on top of it for a photo today:

(Fun fact: He actually fell off into one of those little grassy plants right after the photo was taken... but it looked like a soft landing; I think he was okay.) The thing on the middle of the dolphin is TCC's logo. It's all quite sparkly in person, in the right light.