At the Beach: Monday

 The only other time we had been to Chincoteague, we had missed out on hiking their nature trails.  I was determined not to miss out this time, and all the kids were game, so I decided to start with the 1 1/2 mile (2km) Woodland Trail.

I was thinking, with a name like that,  it would be shady, but it turned out the trees had been suffering from a bark beetle, and many of them had a weird sculptural quality that, while fascinating to look at, cast no shade at all.
Little did we know, only the first part of the path was hot and sunny.

Even less did we know that the path becoming cool and shady would be a huge problem!

I took the picture on the right because I loved the huge riven trunk of the holly tree.  But, if you enlarge the picture, you'll see that this is the moment we discovered that every patch of cool shade was swarming with mosquitoes!


Even though every inch of skin was covered with Deet 100,  the little blood suckers swarmed us, landing on parts of our clothes that we hadn't sprayed, and trying to bite through.

I started to wonder if I would need to add a pint to my Red Cross donor card!

We ended up running the rest of the shady parts of the trail, and speed walking the sunny parts. 

But we did get to stop at the Pony Overlook, and you may be able to see the herd in the distance.

It was a bit more of an adventure that we had bargained for, and more running than I thought I could do.

Turns out I was just lacking the proper motivation!

After we'd recovered, we went off for our annual candy store trip.

I'm not sure which the kids enjoy more: picking from a zillion kinds of candy, or swapping with siblings for the rest of the week.

I got a bag of licorice allsorts, so I was happy!

 After dinner we took another kayaking trip (if the cove across the street can be called a trip).

Everyone was a bit more comfortable, so Zorg gave Choclo and Oob turns in the big kayak while he taught them the basics.

Choclo and Oob were both over the moon!