Kiptopeke State Park

Trip:48
Nights: 167-169

We planned to be at Grayson Highlands State Park in SW Virginia this past weekend. Hurricane Helene had other ideas. When I checked Tuesday for alternate camping options in the state park system, I found 6 sites at Kiptopeke State Park, and nothing else. At least it made the decision easy. We had never been to Kiptopeke, so it was nice to check it off the list. Also, it's only 2 hours from home.

We had postcard perfect 75F and sunny weather all weekend. The park is right in the east coat flyway for migrating birds, and it's migration season. So our hastily reorganized itinerary was focused around birds. Also, we were meeting friends there, so campfire and beer time was also planned.

We arrived Thursday late afternoon, and got up Friday morning to go to the Cape Charles Nature Preserve, which features a 1/3 mile boardwalk to the Chesapeake Bay, and a man-made pond/wetland. Unfortunately the board walk runs right along the property line with a concrete manufacturing plant, and the noise from that place was annoying to both birds and people. We did manage to log about 20 species in the preserve, but almost all of them were around the pond, which was far enough from the plant that we could not hear it. Then we went back to the state park and followed a couple of trails where we again logged about 20 species. The hawk watch folks were there at the park, so we stopped by and saw a bunch of migrating hawks as they flew overhead headed south. They told us about seeing 18,000 migrating blue jays in 2 hours that morning, which explained why we had seen so many blue jays in our two birding walks that day. That evening we dined with our friends at Cape Charles Brewing, where the beer and the fish and chips were excellent.

On Saturday AM we had reservations to take a guided tour of Fisherman's Island, the southern most island in the Chesapeake Bay. As we met up at the Eastern Shore NWR for the tour, they told us the mosquitoes were particularly bad on the island right now. I brushed it off as hyperbole, but did add a second layer of bug spray. As we pulled into the parking area for the tour, the cars parking on the grass unleashed a cloud of mosquitoes unlike anything I had ever seen before. It was literally a black cloud of death hovering over the car. My wife noped out right there and decided she would be sitting in the car to 2 hours while we tramped around with the naturalists. Her friend decided to stick with her, and the husbands quickly decided this was a discretion is the better part of valor situation, and we told the rangers were were opting out and heading back to the NWR visitor center. Two folks there told us we probably made the right call. They pointed us to a local birding trail at the NWR that led to a WWII long range gun bunker. Even that walk was very, very buggy. I logged over 200+ blue jays on that 1 mile walk, and I definitely under-counted. After that I went kayaking in a rather choppy Chesapeak Bay while Michelle chilled at the camper in the perfect weather. When I got back from the water I got some camping chair and reading time in before we headed into Cape Charles for ice cream. The women wanted to wander into some of the local shops, so the guys headed into the local Irish pub to wait for them. That evening we went out on a ranger led walk in search of owls. We failed to see any owls, but we did hear two eastern screech owls.

Sunday morning I headed back over to the hawk migration count while Michelle stayed back at the camper. I witnessed hundred and hundreds of Northern Flickers streaming south, as well as quite a few Sharp-Shinned Hawks and American Kestrels. It was a very eventful hour and I was bummed I had to leave to pack up the camper and head home.

The trip home was uneventful.