Virginia Beach and Back

We spent a late summer weekend in Virginia Beach again this year since we had such a nice time last year.  We returned to a favorite place to eat...a tiny Cuban place called Mojito Cafe.  We were there fairly early for dinner and had the place pretty much to ourselves.  It's tiny, so being the only customers was great since the kids couldn't bother other customers.  Harper with her customary cheesy grin.

Mojito Cafe, unsurprisingly, has fabulous mojitos.  The challenge was convincing Spenser that it was a "daddy drink" and not a kid drink.

We started off with conch fritters as an appetizer.  After one taste, Spenser stole them all off the plate.

The next morning, we returned to a favorite breakfast place, the Pocohontas Pancake House.

Both kids ate up their pancakes.  Once again, it pays to be early at this place.  It's large, but gets really crowded quick.

We spent the early part of the day at the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center.  We visited here last year, but only had a few hours to explored the main building.  This time, we got to see it all, including the nice nature walk between the buildings.  Here, Spenser is making the seismograph jiggle by jumping on the ground.

They have a great tunnel to walk through with fish, sharks, and rays swimming overhead and all around you.

Eaten by sharks!  Again!

The next building over was more about Virginia aquatic life and had this nice play area for the kids.

Spenser inside a column shaped aquarium demonstrating the aquatic life in Virginia's bays.

After lunch, we went to Mt. Trashmore.  They have an amazing playground there and the kids ran and played until they were both exhausted.  Harper spent a lot of time inspecting this slide before going down it.

Spenser "rock climbing" at Mt. Trashmore.

After a nap, we spent the late afternoon at the beach, had some dinner and then headed back to the hotel.  If you can't tell, both kids were exhausted.

Just a great picture.  This is actually a little park we found on the way to Virginia Beach.  It was in the middle of a random neighborhood right off the highway.  Shout out to Yelp for always helping us find cool things to do.

We took the back way to drive home and stumbled on this great nature preserve.  It's part of an old farm that is being allowed to go back to native grasses.  The park bumps up against a waterway that dumps into the Rappahannock River and there is a canoe put in and a fishing dock.  Spenser had a lot of fun collecting sticks and inspecting the little garter snake we found.