Coinjock: Where the ICW Begins… and the Prime Rib Disappears

Coinjock. Our first stopping point on the ICW. ICW stands for the Intracoastal Waterway. It goes all the way from Norfolk, VA to Miami, FL. You may be wondering why I wrote INTRAcoastal and not INTERcoastal. It wasn't a typo. Many people mistakenly call it the intercoastal, but that is incorrect. Inter- means between and intra- means within. I didn't know there was a difference between the two words until I looked it up while I was writing this post. So intercoastal means between two coasts and intracoastal means within the coast. Intercoastal connects two bodies of water and intracoastal means a waterway within the coast. 

We stopped at the 50 mile mark on the ICW which is Coinjock, a small town with a population of about 300 people. Coinjock is a Native American word meaning “the place of the blueberry swamps”. The blueberry swamps are swamps with blueberries of course! The blueberries are native to Coinjock. You might not think 50 miles is a long way, but on a boat we go much slower than a car. Sometimes we do as many as 90 miles in one day, but today we made sure that this was our stopping point. One of the reasons for stopping was the weather. It was really windy and we needed calm weather to go through the Albemarle sound. The other reason was my favorite reason. The prime rib!! 

The marina restaurant is famous for their prime rib! So of course that night we had to go to the restaurant and have the 32oz prime rib! I just realized that every time I've written prime rib, I added an exclamation point. It was that good! They are so popular that we had to reserve our steak before we even got to the marina. Unfortunately my Mom had to go to a friends house to pick up a part for the boat so she was unable to eat the yummy food. Thankfully we went the next night and did it all again. 

Okay, back to eating that prime rib. My brother and I ordered a Roy Rogers which is basically a Shirley Temple, but with coke. It was a special treat. The steak arrived and it was HUGE! It looked like it was the size of me. But it had no chance against all of us. I felt like it was gone in seconds. We had dessert which was super extra yummy. Full and happy, I waddled back to the boat and we sat on the couch to watch a movie. It was really exciting to know that we were finally in the intracoastal and a weather window was opening up so we could continue down the ICW. I snuck into bed and fell asleep like a rock! 

THE END!