The Hampton Roads To-Do List

I spent more than three years living in Hampton Roads, Virginia. (They call it the "Seven Cities of Hampton Roads", but I sort of call shenanigans on that - it's one big city.) In 2010, I had resigned myself to the idea that I was going to be stuck there until at least the end of 2011, so I started putting together a list of stuff that I wanted to do in order to keep myself occupied. These are things I should have been doing all along, but hadn't.

Most activities were based in Norfolk. There was the Chrysler Museum of Art, the Hermitage Museum and Gardens, the Douglas MacArthur Memorial, Nauticus and USS Wisconsin, the Norfolk Botanical Garden, Old Dominion University, the Virginia Zoo, and Norfolk Tides and Admirals baseball and hockey games. (One of my biggest regrets was not attending a movie on the fantail of USS Wisconsin in 2010, but it was Friday, I was beat like a drum, and it was so hot.)

In Portsmouth, there was the Elizabeth River Ferry, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum and United States Lightship Portsmouth, and the prospect of taking some artistic photos of Olde Towne Portsmouth photography - not to be confused with the rest of Portsmouth, which is pretty dodgy. While I lived in Hampton Roads, I actually really enjoyed Olde Towne Portsmouth, and have fond memories of the Bier Garden; I even saw Star Trek at the Commodore Theatre in 2009 with my buddy M@.

Virginia Beach boasted the Military Aviation Museum, and I also wanted to take some classes at the Virginia Beach Rock Gym. (One thing I'm glad I did was to go to a bunch of concerts down at the beach with my buddy Ken, and I'm also glad that I took Captain John and Household 6 to Joint Expeditionary Base East, formerly known as Fort Story, to see the site of the first landing of the Jamestown settlers in 1607.) Hampton had the U.S. Army Transportation Museum and the Virginia Air and Space Center. Newport News had the Mariner's Museum and the Virginia Living Museum.

I also thought I might check out Colonial Williamsburg and the Jamestown Settlement and Yorktown Victory Center. There was an inlet in the Outer Banks called Oregon Inlet, and I thought I might head down there to check it out. I also wanted to practice my land navigation skills and do some geocaching, and I wanted to try my hand at assembling both shortwave (1, 2) and AM (1, 2, 3) radio kits. Oh, and I had accidentally germinated garlic in my refrigerator, so I thought maybe I'd try to actually grow garlic deliberately.

I actually accomplished very few of these goals, as my time in Virginia was cut short by the cancellation of the project to which I'd been assigned. I visited the Mariner's Museum with Big Brother Caleb on the 5th of September 2010 (pictured), and rode the Elizabeth River Ferry on 25th September 2010 on a first date with a young lady. I attended a bunch of baseball and hockey games, most of them before that particular list came into play. I'd visited Nauticus and USS Wisconsin in March of 2009 with Captain John and HH6. That's about it.

So, why am I bringing all of this up? Well, at some point in the foreseeable future, I'll be leaving "home" and heading somewhere new. Once I get there, I want to put together a list of similar local attractions, and try to visit at least one per month during my tenure in my next temporary digs. At some point, I'd also like to visit some or all of these Hampton Roads attractions, but unless I wind up in Hampton Roads again, that will have to wait. I sort of feel like I tend to squander my time in the various interesting places to which I gravitate, and I'd like to be a bit more proactive in the future.

I also had a handful of professional development goals, but that's another story...