Wordless Wednesday: Beach Vacation

At the Beach: Friday

 We went to Mass at St. Andrew's on Chincoteague, and were very warmly welcomed by the community there!

It turns out they are the oldest church building on the island, dating back to the 1700s, although the church was originally Baptist, then Methodist.  It's only been Catholic since the 1970s - before they got a building, they had Mass at the movie theater!

What impressed me the most was their loving care of the cemetery.  There are graves from all three denominations, of course, and they've turned the small cemetery into a beautiful and prayerful garden for all God's children buried there.

I forgot to mention this from earlier in the week:  I'm not sure why, but the first time we went to Assateague, I declared that the first person to see the ponies got to sing their My Little Pony song.

Picture from Maryland Tourism- we were never this close.

And every trip we have a new winner (two because we count there and back).  It's been crazy (who did opera?) and amazing (Leena's Dance song from Labyrinth with pony words: Prance, Pony, Prance), and sometimes annoying (my singing the first three words of My Little Pony for five minutes), but it's a thing now, just so you know.

More stuff I forgot to mention:

Fun model kits!

My microscope bulb burned out!  I was able to use my phone flashlight, but it was hard for the younger kids to use the microscope.


They continued to make slides of everything they could find anyway!

Also, for whatever reason, we couldn't find any jellyfish.  This is usually great news, but I had particularly hoped to make a slide of the stinging cells with a methylene blue stain. I may have to go back to the bay.

More kayaking!

Would you believe we found out today that we also had a canoe?

Very fun and holds more people, a definite win!

At the Beach: Thursday

 We went to the Tom's Cove Visitor's Center, which is mere steps from the beach on Assateague.

They had a great touch pool of local animals,an aquarium of local fish, and a large pile of beach finds: bones, shells, and oddities like whale baleen!





It was particularly interesting to see the whale vertebrae, turtle scutes, and dolphin jaw since we have fossils of these at home.

And then it was down to the beach!



Aside from the usual wave riding and sand play, we were fascinated by all sorts of abundant small  creatures.




 I'm not sure if it was because we were near the tip of the island, next to the part which was closed to protect the nesting sites, but we saw swarms of tiny crustaceans which we call sand fleas.

They don't bite, and they look nothing like fleas!

It turns out they're also called mole crabs since they are exposed by waves, then speedily dig themselves back into the sand.

We saw hundreds of them in the surf, and many on the sand.

We also found many baby clams exposed by the surf.

They come in all sorts of colors and look like tiny jewels glistening in the sun- if jewels could stick out tiny feet and dig themselves back into the sand!







All in all, it was one of the prettiest beaches we've seen, especially the part closed off for the nests.













 And there was still plenty of room for shenanigans!

Back at the ranch, we lazed about and played with these nifty dinosaur hand tattoos!

At the Beach: Wednesday (Mostly Wordless)

 NASA Wallops Island Visitors Center (This is where NASA launches all it's unmanned missions)

 An adventurous exploration of Chincoteague.

At the Beach: Tuesday

Today we climbed the old Assateague lighthouse.

It has about 8 million steps, but my legs didn't actually fall off until I was back on  the ground.

Kidding!  My legs haven't decided whether they will fall off or not.

They're thinking about it.

But the view was amazing!!






It was a beautifully clear day, so you could see all off Assateague, and most of Chincoteague!

My eyes think it was totally worth it!

Besides which, Klenda and I got to sing the sea shanty about the lighthouse keeper and his mermaid wife as we climbed down.

I think, with the echoing tower and Klenda's harmonizing, we sounded rather good!

Then it was back home for lunch, lazing about and more kayaking.

After dinner, it was more beach time!

I almost forgot, we saw what we thought was a whale swimming in the shallow water.

No dorsal fin, so we knew it wasn't a shark, but we kept seeing a large dark shape which would occasionally raise a giant flipper out of the water.

Except it wasn't the giant flipper of a whale, it was the giant edge of a giant ray!

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!