The Canal Less Traveled

Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. Robert Frost.

That's one of my favorite quotes and one that we've tried to follow for the last 25 years as we've traveled around.

We left Oriental, meandered around, watched some beautiful sunsets, spent 2 nights at the free dock in Elizabeth City, (where the city not only hosts a wine and cheese party for the boaters, but the grocery store will pick you up and deliver you back to the harbour) and made our way to the Great Dismal Swamp. We boaters were few and far between here, very nice. The canal through the GDS was originally surveyed by George Washington in the late 1700's and the canal was finished in 1803. It's little used these days, except by pleasure boaters, so it's a little overgrown and a little wild looking. It's so narrow in spots that we actually had to look up to avoid the trees, instead of just looking ahead to avoid the floating logs. The canal is maintained at 6' of depth and that's what we draw, so Steve still has a sore neck and back from being tense for so long. He just can't accept the fact that the bottom paint will get scratched at some point. We only hit bottom once.