I’m back with some vacation and book recommendations after traveling to the East Coast during early July.

Earlier this year, we purchased an RV (motorhome) for travel and fun. It has been one of the best decision we’ve made, and even during the pandemic we have still been comfortable traveling because we can keep to ourselves both on the road and at campsites.

Pre-pandemic, I had already planned an RV trip to Virginia, where I traveled many summers as a child because it’s where my dad grew up and where he had family. From March on, whether we could go and do everything as I had planned seemed to be changing daily (as was everything) but it turned out we were still able to take an amazing (social distanced) vacation.

First, we had an amazing experience at First Landing State Park in Virginia Beach. All campsites were different, they had the most beautiful trees, and we were walking distance to the beach, where we had four amazing days!

I still don’t know what kind of trees these are but I loved them!!

The park is named First Landing after the first English colonists who landed there in 1607. To learn more about the area, I had started reading Chesapeake: A Novel by James Mitchner.

I’ve really missed the Atlantic and this was my kids’ first time seeing it.

Mitchner writes epic, historical fiction about specific areas of the world. The stories go through several generations and are entertaining and informative. They are also very long. I started this book a couple of months ago and I expect it will take me a couple more months to finish. It is a slower read so I have been practicing my multibooking technique. And in the meantime because we were traveling for hundreds of miles, I have read several other books I will write about soon.

In this classic novel, James A. Michener brings his grand epic tradition to bear on the four-hundred-year saga of America’s Eastern Shore, from its Native American roots to the modern age.

Besides enjoying the beach near our campsite, we visited the Neptune statue, enjoyed an escape room, and found the best place to eat in Virginia Beach: Dockside.

In future posts, I’ll talk about the historical part of our trip and what else I read while traveling.