A week or so ago we made a brief visit to Bennett's Creek Park in Suffolk with our friends. The park features a playground, skate park, and fishing pier, but our favorite part was climbing rocks and exploring the tiny beach down by the Nansemond River. It was incredibly muddy but that's spring, isn't it? Tons and tons of mud. An added plus: on your way out you can stop by Bennett's Creek Farm Market for some of their amazing she-crab soup, yum!



We've had a lot going on lately, including a trip to Asheville (such a gorgeous town!), Easter (here's A. and G. in their finery), and oh, yeah, by the way, Anouk turned FIVE last week. Five! Can you believe it? We made our annual donation to March of Dimes in honor of our former preemie and if you haven't already made other plans for your charitable giving, we hope you will, too.

Valentines Day falls on a Saturday this year, which to me means: you go out for delicious breakfast/pastries/brunch on Valentines morning. If you are looking for a kid-friendly destination that fulfills this requirement, allow me to suggest O'DoodleDoo's Donuts, a sweet little retro roadside shop in Suffolk that offers some gorgeously fluffy and delicious cake donuts in creative flavor combinations. James, Anne, and I drove out to sample their wares last weekend, for research purposes of course.

Besides the donuts, O'DoodleDoo's was hosting one of the Virginia LOVEworks and so we all posed for photos with it while we were there. For some reason, Anouk and I are obsessed with the LOVEworks statues and really want to hit as many as we can. For a complete list of LOVEworks locations, click here.

And if you are really interested in a full report, our favorite donuts were the French toast, chocolate fudge, and chocolate-peanut-butter habanero (sweet with a spicy kick). O'DoodleDoo's has dozens of flavors and changes it up their menu on the regular, but their Facebook is really good at letting you know what to expect on any given day.

Happy Valentines Day in advance!

There's really only one time of year to visit the Great Dismal Swamp, and the time is now. In summer, the swamp tends to live up to its name: it's hot, dark, smelly, and the bugs. Oh, the bugs! By mid-May, the mosquitoes are out in swarms and they don't go away until October or November, and by then, things are pretty gray and flat and all of the singing frogs and birds have buried themselves in the mud or flown south for the winter.

But for a few weeks in early spring, the Dismal Swamp is like Goldilocks' porridge: juuuust right. Last Saturday just happened to fall in the right window and so that's when we visited. The trees were beginning to leaf out, but the branches were still bare enough to let in a little sun and warmth. The swamp seemed to be coming to life under our eyes. Everything was still and quiet, but with branches rustling and birds calling from the tree tops, it was one of the loudest silences I've ever heard.

The Great Dismal Swamp is huge, one of the last true wildernesses in the United States, and entrances for it scattered throughout Chesapeake, Suffolk, and northeastern North Carolina. After doing a little research, we settled on the Washington Ditch entrance in Suffolk. For a few reasons: first, the raised boardwalk trail seemed best for our little hiker. At a manageable 3/4-mile, it was a reasonable distance for Baby A. -- we knew that there was a good possibility that she'd be able to walk it without us having to carry her all the way back. Second, Washington Ditch is one of the only swamp entrances with bathrooms in the parking area, a boon that should not be discounted. Third, there have been very few black bear sightings (!) there recently. 

Anne enjoyed herself immensely. Who knew that toddlers were so keen on swamps? She listened hard for the bird and frog calls and mimicked each one; she found a stick and poked around in the murky water; she noticed every vine and leaf and amassed quite a collection of bright red maple seed pods. I enjoyed watching her watch everything -- there were honestly a lot of things I would have missed if I hadn't seen them through her eyes.


Sometime in the future, James and I would like to take Anne to hike the 4.5-mile Washington Ditch trail to Lake Drummond, one of the only two natural lakes in Virginia. The trail was surveyed by George Washington himself in 1775, and the placid ditch alongside was dug entirely by slave labor, a truly mind-boggling task once you see how long and wide it is and think about what that must have meant in the age before heavy-duty digging equipment was invented. We walked a little of the trail today, but it's going to be a long time before A. can manage the 9-mile trek in and out. Still, tween and teen hikers might be able to manage it, or younger kids, if there are bikes involved.


A word to the wise: any time you go into the Great Dismal Swamp, bring sunscreen and bug spray just in case, and be sure to plan for any eventuality -- cell phone service is spotty (at best) in the swamp. And remind your kids what poison ivy looks like. It's everywhere, all over the trees and creeping up the wood railings on the path in places. As the poet Thomas Moore reminds us his ballad, "The Lake of the Dismal Swamp," written in 1806, it really should be avoided at all costs:

Our friend Angela has a knack for finding the most offbeat, most totally amazing things to do in the area (if she had a blog, it would definitely be one to read!) She was the one who told us about the Nansemond Indian Tribe Pow Wow this weekend; on Saturday, James, Baby A. and I drove out to the Lone Star Lakes Lodge in Suffolk to meet Ange and her husband, watch the dancers, listen to traditional songs and stories, and experience a little bit of local Native American culture.

Awesome things about the day: the grand entrance procession, watching the jingle-bell dress dancers, a group of young girls whose dresses glittered and flashed and jangled as they moved in time with the drums, and the big swooping wings of eagle and hawk feathers that seemed to sprout from the backs of every dancer. I have a thing for feathers, and these were definitely striking.





We had the chance to join the dancers on the field at one point, and Angela and I grabbed Baby A. and hauled her out with us. She had a blast standing in the middle of the long twisting line of people and observing, until one very serious male dancer with a full face of black and white paint bent down to smile at her and sent her scurrying to find us in the throng.

In between dances, we ate buffalo wraps and traditional Nansemond bread and strolled through booths of brightly-colored wares. The quote of the day came from a mother of about four preteen boys who descended on a table of spears: "I'm not buying any shooting, stabbing, throwing, or killing utensils, forget about it!"



I think one of the things that surprised me most about the day was learning that the Nansemond tribe (along with five other Virginia tribes) are still fighting to be recognized by the federal government. A bill to recognize these tribes was put up for consideration by the Senate in 2009 but was put on hold. Until it passes, these tribes won't be eligible for the benefits that other federally recognized tribes receive. (To read more about what the bill means for the Nansemond and the Chickahominy, Eastern Chickahominy, Upper Mattaponi, Rappahannock, and Monacan peoples, go here.)



We had a really good day. Thank you, Angela!