Road Trip Continued: Over and Under

 We motored down the Delmarva peninsula (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia - get it?) overnighting in quaintly named Pokemoke City, then on down for our long-awaited tryst with one of the marvels of modern America, the  ....

It's the sort of thing people try to tell you about but you really can't understand it until you experience it. First the bridge - see it there, faintly in the distance....

Not really a bridge, although it has a couple of arches but a causeway on stubby stilts

There's the northward lane on the left.

All stretching for miles across the broad expanse of Chesapeake Bay, famous for crabs and brown curly-coated Chesapeake Bay retrievers. Hubby remembers sailing there one sultry summer, battling his way through a soup of green jellyfish. Today was a day of white-caps and wind and wheeling seagulls.

First opened in 1964 and widened in the 1990s, 17.5 miles long,shore to shore,  the Bridge-Tunnel is also, apparently, one of the "seven engineering wonders of the world".

 He's probably heading for Florida, towing his car behind a giant RV. A familiar sight when you're going south in October.

 And there, coming up in the distance..

Is the first tunnel..

 Down we go...

 Into the fantastical depths

 And out the other side

 Where it's a bridge again

 Until the second tunnel

At the end of which is a fishing pier and of course a gift shop.

And one of the weirdest views in America - the gap between the two rocky places is where the tunnel lies buried in the depths.

 There's the far end, looking north, with the bridge behind.

As ships wait to go through the gap.

There's one of those slot-machine telescope things, just like Southend.

And people fishing on the pier, wrapped up against the wind.

And finally, ahead, dry land again, the mainland of Virginia.

There's a 12 dollar toll but what's that for an unforgettable experience? Better than a roller-coaster any day.