Beyond the silver rainbow: Chincoteague Island

Last Friday (Oct 7) my wife and me took a car and drove towards the East coast. The plan was to spend the night and next half day on Chincoteague island, Virginia. Then drive North to Ocean City, Maryland, where Route 528 runs into Delaware.

To get a break from city life, we found that Chincoteague island would be the ideal travel destination. Seeing the ocean, miles of sand beaches and - for my wife the biggest reason - some of the 300 wild ponies living on the neighboring Assateague Island. Our drive started as usual much later than planned and we hit the rush hour at Annapolis. Stop and go traffic lasted about 50 minutes during which we managed to "drive" 3 miles closer to our destination. Then we drove through the night and arrived at the Inn around 9pm. After checking we searched a seafood restaurant. Unfortunately all kitchens closed at 9pm and we ended up in a very typical American diner with the menu card listing mostly deep-fried dishes, macaroni & cheese and spaghetti&meatballs. We took the left overs "to-go" and decided to have seafood on Saturday night.

Breakfast next morning meant getting vouchers for the very same American diner, where a everything-deep-fried buffet was available. Mary Jo, our waitress, was really nice and was sorry for not having any low-fat milk to offer. She came up with chocolate milk which had no fat. I tasted some and quickly learned that no fat does in fact not mean no sugar. Almost choked on the first sip, which was also the last one :) Looking really hard, we found some fruits to finish breakfast. It was a no-brainer to skip lunch besides some bananas and Friday's left-overs.

The pony-cruise we booked started at 10.30 and we hurried to the dock. It was a nice two hours on a small boat with 30 other pony-watchers. The nature and animals were a great experience and we forgot all about life at campus near DC. Back on safe land, we took the car and drove to Assateague island which was open for traffic during autumn. The island is very beautiful, I'll put the panorama picture below, so you get an idea. Where the sand beach began, lots of cars were parked. Many people to the opportunity to be lazy at the beach with perfect summer weather. Sun, no clouds, little wind and about 28C.

It was not easy to leave the island as all seemed so perfect. But we had to be back home at night, so we continued our trip to Ocean City. It was quite a disappointment to see that OC wasn't as pretty as we hoped. The buildings were just put in any way and resembled no real entity. Not sure how to explain it. There was simply no overall design picture behind it. Very commercially focused. Almost a copy of Atlantic City. The boardwalk in OC was nice and we strolled around and watched the impressive waves hitting the shore. In Northern Finland I'm used to 5-8 cm waves on a windy day, so the one meter waves here were gigantic :)

The coastal highway was our next mission, trying to find a good spot for the sunset. The highway is built on a few hundred meter wide sand strip, the Atlantic ocean on the East and a bay on the West. To get there we had to leave Ocean City which was difficult due to the annual Endless Summer Cruisin', held on that weekend. All kind of hot-rod cars and oldtimers were out jamming the streets. Hundreds of spectators filled up the sidewalks with their chairs.

Finally we reached the highway and found a quiet beach were we watched the colorful sky right after sunset. In hindsight we should have visited Ocean City first or not at all. After seeing the nature and animals it didn't feel right to be in a busy city. A seafood dinner in Bethany Beach, Delaware (worth a visit in daytime) rounded up the day plus the three hour drive home to College Park.