Photo: Boat Bookworms, Great Dismal Swamp

We slipped our dock this at Elizabeth City this morning and proceeded up the Great Dismal Swamp Canal route, which is an alternate to the busier Virginia Cut ICW route. Construction of the the Great Dismal Swamp Canal began in 1793 using slave labour, and took over ten years to complete. During the Civil War, it served as a major supply route for the Confederacy, as it enabled them to move shipments inland and away from the Union naval blockades on the coast. Still, it suffered significant damage in the way, and it was not until the late 1800s that the canal was restored, and cargo and passengers once again plied its waterways from Norfolk to the Virginia interior and North Carolina. Use of the canal declined in the twentieth century, and the US Army Corps of Engineers purhased it in 1920 for $500K. Today, it is a recreational boating route, a shadow of its former self, although there are ruins and other markers of old docks, inns and other structures that line its banks, leaving one to imagine what it must have looked like without its current canopy of trees, with barges and paddlewheelers moving farm goods, lumber, passengers, and troops and army supplies.

Yesterday I alluded to the girls' reading habits. Steph and Marine literally chew through books at an astonishing rate. Although Steph hasn't completed her tally so far, Marine has read over seventy books since we left, totalling over 13,000 pages. Steph's tally will certainly be higher. Marine reads whatever books Steph has gone through, and Steph is now rummaging through our books, and just finished reading Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park" and "Timeline". A regular feature of any port call is to check the marina's book swaps, or the local bookstores, just so we can keep up with the demand for fresh reading material!