We made it to Delaware!

The goal of this day was to get DH to Delaware, to check off his 47^th state.

We were only going 180 miles for the day, so we didn’t need to get an early start.  Which worked out great, because the sunrise view from our hotel room was beautiful!  And I wanted to walk down the boardwalk to see King Neptune.  Our hotel was located around the mid-point of the Boardwalk, so it was about a half mile down to where King Neptune greets you, so this made a good start to the day’s activities.

We don’t usually plan things to do in the mornings before leaving a hotel, so this was a bit different for me.  I have a recurring dream where we’re so late getting our stuff together to check out and it makes me anxious!  I guess that’s why no matter how much I spread stuff out in the hotel room, it’s all packed up the night before we leave.

But in this case, it was worth taking the extra time to walk on the boardwalk and just enjoy the cooler (but still humid) weather and early sunshine before getting in the car for the day.

Our route took us across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.  It cost $16.00 and we were able to use our SunPass transponder to pay.  When we reached the other side, I thought we would be in Maryland, but that was still 70 miles away.  We stopped at the Eastern Shore of Virginia Welcome Center, and the lady there gave us some suggestions of things to do along the way before we got to Maryland.

One of the suggestions was to visit the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge and Assateague Island National Seashore.  It’s about 12 miles off the main highway.  There’s a small town just before you get to the Refuge and it seems like it gets a lot of tourists.  We went to the Visitor’s Center where we talked with a ranger who gave us some suggestions of what to see and do while we were there.  I also got stamps added to my National Park Passport that my coworkers gave me when I retired in 2024.

One of the things that Chincoteague NWR is known for is the ponies who run free on the island.  Not quite the same as those on Cumberland Island in Georgia, but similar.  The NWR is split between Virginia and Maryland and how they handle the horses also varies.  The horses on the Virginia side “belong” to the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Department.  They are gathered and ridden and their colts are often auctioned as a fundraiser.  The ones on the Maryland side are managed by the National Park Service and are treated as wildlife – so basically “live and let live” for the horses.  As we drove to see the Assateague Island National Seashore, we went past the marshland where the ponies hang out and were able to see a few.

As for the seashore itself, it wasn’t anything to write home about.  In fact, I said to DH that I know we’re spoiled with the gulf shores beaches near where we are.  But compared to Virginia Beach, I liked it better as a beach.

We also stopped to hike the quarter-mile trail to see the Assateague Island Lighthouse.  It wasn’t open for touring, but there was a staff person there who had the door opened and allowed us to take a look inside.

On the way to the wildlife refuge, we passed the NASA Wallops Flight Facility Visitor Center, so we stopped on the way back to see what was there.  While they don’t launch the biggest rockets like those that go from Cape Canaveral, they’ve launched over 16,000 rockets, and they have a viewing area where you can watch them.  They do educational programs, too.  While we were there, they were doing a program about the Nancy Grace Roman telescope that was launched on August 30^th.

By now it was getting later in the afternoon and we still had a few things to do.  One of those was to have lunch (which became an after 3 PM lunch) at the Lobster Shanty on Fenwick Island.  This restaurant is owned by my dad’s second cousin’s family, and their son (my 3^rd cousin) works there and at another restaurant they own.  I’ve never met these folks, and I only know about them from my genealogy work, but I thought maybe he might be interested in learning more about his grandmother’s family.  If we had gotten to the Lobster Shanty earlier, he would have been there for us to meet, but he had already left.  The lady at the check-in stand, however, told me that he’d gone over to the other restaurant that opened at 4 PM.  It was only 5 minutes away and was on our route to the hotel for the night, so after a delicious meal, we headed over to see if I could introduce myself.

It was really nice to see my genealogy work paying off in connecting with a family member(s) that didn’t know much at all about a branch of their family history.  While I don’t know if he’ll be interested enough to contact me, he seemed genuinely pleased to meet a distant cousin.  I left him with information going back several generations from our common great-grandparents (and earlier).

We had planned to visit one of Delaware’s state parks but our detour earlier in the day used up that time – and it was fine because that’s what this trip is about – stopping to see things along the way and adjusting if we need to.  We were both pretty tired and knew the next day was an early start.

Up next:  DH adds his 48^th state.

~ Cindy D.