Virginia Tidewater

This is a land of inlets and bridges, of boats and buoys. It's the Virginia Tidewater, home of three peninsulas — the Eastern Shore, the Northern Neck and the Middle Peninsula.

It's a place of fringed coastlines, of oat grass waving in a stiff breeze off the Chesapeake. There are beaches here, but they are small and riverine. And the water is salt, fresh and brackish.

As if to mimic this variety, the landscape holds colonial churches, ancestral estates, boardwalks for bird-watching — and even an oyster academy.

It's not a matter of what to do ... but of how much we can cram in.