I've been driving my family to Long Island from NC every year for Thanksgiving for the past 20 years. A few years into this, I got really tired of taking I-95, especially once you get north of Richmond. So I started looking into alternate routes and instead of I-95 all the way, we cut over to Norfolk from I-95 at Emporia, then take the CBBT to the Delmarva Peninsula, up to Lewes, DE, the Cape May ferry to the Garden State parkway to Staten Island, then across the Verrazzano to Long Island.

Other than one year when a deer jumped out in front of me on the GSP, it's a much more pleasant and relaxing trip than I-95, and it's nice to have the ferry ride to break things up.

Anyway, that's how I discovered the CBBT in the first place and it's always been a fun part of the (580'ish mi / 930'ish km) trip.