A long trip, with some of it UNDER water!
We’ve seen such awesome sights on this U.S.A. Road Trip, but nothing like we are going to see this week Guaranteed! I don’t know if you’ve kept track of miles, but since the beginning of 2020 we have visited eight Stocktons and logged over 2,600 miles. Of course, before Christmas, the trip that started it all—Stockton, California, then Stockton, Utah—was more than 3,000 miles. So you know there must be something really special this week if it beats everything we’ve seen in more than 5,000 miles! And this is it: as we leave Stockton, Maryland this week and head to Stockton, Georgia, we are going to travel a little more than 750 miles, over land, over sea and UNDER the sea!
We could go back up towards Annapolis, Maryland, crossing the Chesapeake Bay on the parallel bridges that span over four miles across the oean. Instead we’ve chosen to follow the Atlantic coastline and the northern route to experience the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel system, consisting of more than 17 miles of just that, bridges and tunnels, over and under the water. This is quite something for us land-locked Kansans! And I think I’m going to have to try some seafood; it’s either that or starve. I would be embarrassed to ask for chicken fried chicken out in these here parts! We are heading to the pinpoint on our GoogleMap that is near the Florida-George Line. The state line, not the country band. Sorry; I just couldn’t resist.
We left Maryland and marveled at the picturesque bayside and seaside villages along the 70-mile peninsula that makes up the eastern shore of Virginia and arrived at the Toll Booth for the 17-mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. After enjoying the Visitor Center, we pay our $14 toll and started the trip across, over and under. (You can drive it, too, on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRVS4J0a6JU.) This amazing feat of engineering, which opened April 15, 1964, was selected as one of the “Seven Engineering Wonders of the Modern Worldf More than 12 miles of this drive is a trestle roadway, supported by more than 5,000 concrete columns called piles, sunk in the water in depths ranging from 30 to 55 feet. There are four man-made islands that hold the traffic ramps into and out of the two tunnels, each about a mile long, that protect two of the world’s most important shipping channels. Thousands of tons of boulders, called riprap, were dropped to create the outer rims of the islands, which were then filled with nearly two million tons of sand and rock If I could have had a dollar for every time I said “this is amazing!” I certainly could have paid the toll, and then some. This whole area must be explored more, for real.
After getting over and through the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, we got our legs under us on land in Norfolk, Virginia, and checked out this area where a cousin of mine was stationed in the Navy for many years. This city is really all about the U.S. Navy, and its presence is impressive. Just outside of Norfolk, we decided to stop in Suffolk for the night and checked in at a Hilton Garden Inn. As we searched for a place for dinner, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven when I spotted the Feather ‘N’ Fin Chicken & Seafood restaurant. I am not kidding I need to buy stock in this place! Fortunately there was enough of a “deep-fat fried” smell to the place to cover up the fishy smell, and I got that chicken fried chicken dinner after all!
We got an early start the following morning as we still had over 600 miles to our destination, and soon we hooked up with 1-95 and crossed into North Carolina. Two hundred miles later we spotted one of our favorite destinations and enjoyed lunch at Cracker Barrel in Fay etteville, once again breaking our rule of “no franchise eateries:’ It’s hard to pass up a Cracker Barrel. Then we pushed on to Savannah, Georgia where we stayed overnight and enjoyed some sightseeing in this beautiful coastal city. This needs to be a destination all its own sometime.
After another early morning start, we travelled on to our destination, arriving in Stockton, Georgia mid-afternoon. Along the way, we had looked ahead and knew that, other than the Stockton Quick Stop, there was no chance of finding something to eat once we arrived. As we drove through Homerville, just 17 miles outside of Stockton, we stopped at Mama’s Kountry Table and I was able to enjoy a delicious basket of chicken strips and fries... still no seafood for this girl!
There is just not much to the town of Stockton, Georgia; just a couple of churches and the Quick Stop, plus a large honey operation, Ziegler’s Honey Co. This “town” of Stockton is another unincorporated community. The community was named after a Mr. Stockton, a railroad official. The Georgia General Assembly originally incorporated Stockton as a town in 1876, but its municipal charter was repealed in 1995. Located in the far southern portion of the state of Georgia, the surrounding area produces tobacco, turpentine, pine lumber and pulpwood. Moody Air Force Base is located nearby. CSX Transportation rail service runs through Stockton several times a day. A notable piece of Stockton’s history happened in 1944 when the community was the site of a tragic train wreck — a derailment caused by a broken rail — in which 47 people were killed.
We had a nice visit with some folks having their afternoon coffee break at the Stockton Quick Stop. They got a kick out of our stories about hunting down all the Stocktons in the U.S. We knew there was no place nearby to stay overnight, so we went another 18 miles up the road to Valdosta. As we got into town, we just had to stop at the South Georgia Pecan Co. Gift Shop and pick up some snacks and souvenirs for my friends back at the Stockton Sentinel. They all LOVE nuts! Not true... but they ARE nuts! We found a room at a Comfort Inn & Suites with a bonus: directly across the street was Bojangles Famous Chicken ‘n Biscuits. Well butter my biscuits, that was some good eatin’!
It’s hard to imagine, but our search for Stocktons is just about complete. We have only Stockton, Alabama and Stockton, Missouri remaining on our travel itinerary! The destination in Alabama is less than 350 miles, and we’re going to take a route that dips down across the Florida-Georgia Line, just to say we went to Florida, too. Come back to this spot next week as we head to ‘bama!
