Sept 16, 2008
Sept 17, 2008
Sept 18, 2008
Sept 19, 2008
We slept in. We woke to sunnier skies, well, at least, no rain. It was a cool day.
After breakfast, we got the bikes set up and rode into the nature preserve. It’s about 5-6 miles from our hotel to the beach via the biking trails.
We rode all the way out to beach by way of the wildlife loop. We walked along the beach for a while (that uses slightly different muscles), then continue on around the wildlife loop. It’s a fairly flat two mile loop through the marsh area.
The two photos above were taken at the hike/bike beach access and show our bicycles tied up to a railing at the beach.
From there, we visited the Assateague Lighthouse, which was being repaired. It has an ugly black plastic wrapper around the light portion and is badly in need of a paint job. They’re working on it.
The two photos above were taken at the Assateague Light. The one on the left has a little of the history on a sign over the door of the keeper's house. The one on the right is looking almost straight up. Definitely needs a coat or two of paint.
We continued on to the Nature center, which has some very nice exhibits.
On to the Woodland trail, which snakes through the wooded part of the island. I could tell that the trail had a slight downhill slope - we were able to coast for long stretches of the trail - and was dreading the last portion of the loop, knowing that we’d have to climb back to the parking area. Strangely enough, it never did. I still haven’t figured out how we managed to go downhill through a loop trail and return to the point we started without ever having an uphill component.
Then we rode back to town for a late lunch - clam chowder at Sea Shell. They claimed it was the best on the island (we had better at Don’s). It was okay, but the service was very slow.
So, back to the bikes and we rode back to the hotel. We took the “back roads” on the way back, just for a change of pace. Our journey to the beach had been straight down Main Street and the most commercially traveled road. A bit harrowing. The bike trails didn’t pick up until we reached the bridge between the two islands... We spent the better part of four hours on the bicycles this morning.
We got our swimsuits on and went down to the “heated” pool for a while, then the spa, then showers... Their spa could use a good cleaning.
We watched an old movie or two, then got cleaned up for dinner. The sunset afterglow today was very nice. The two photos below were taken off of our balcony.
Dinner was at AJ’s by the Creek. I had scallops, Carl had smothered flounder. Delicious! Carl just had to try the lemon meringue cocktail. The first sip did taste like lemon meringue pie, but that soon wore off. Interesting drink... They did have some good cheesecake. Then back to the room and we both crashed early.