Campgrounds close down so you can't go camping later into the year (we have enjoyed our share of good camping but also freezing cold camping this weekend up in New England). We always love going to NYC this weekend because everyone leaves town, and the financial district hotels are easy gets for cheap.
Here in "the south" I guess we can call it that, things go a little while longer. But this is still the last hurrah for a lot of places. Unless a pool is indoors, it's closed. One hotel I walked past has an outdoor hot tub which was running, but no one was enjoying it. Silly people.
When I went for a walk last night (thank you, brain, for mustering the reasons and energy to go on) it was a ghost town out there. Ice cream stores, bars, and restaurants were open, but it didn't look like a booming nightlife happening through the windows. Just a few folks enjoying a late last thing to do. There's a restaurant across the street, and at 9:30 it looked like plenty of activity was happening and that was the liveliest.
I could have walked across the street and had a cocktail or something but opted to walk walk. The streets were quiet and I opted to walk that way instead.
I walked as far as there were streetlights, and turned around and came back, and then through a couple parking lots. I cut through the back part of the hotel overflow lot, and encountered four black kittens and a grey one hanging out next to a rental cottage. They were very curious about me but obviously feral and skittish. I had no food to give them, but they communicated that they would have appreciated it.
I sat on the steps of the cottage and did the psspssspssspssss to them to get them to come over but they kept their distance from me but were very engaged in my being there. And they were certainly beautiful.
The girl at the front desk said that there was a woman who would do TNR, trap, neuter, release, but she recently passed away, and no one has stepped up to take her place. The guy who takes care of the pools at the hotels on a weekly basis would feed them, but since the pools are all closed now he hasn't been around. So the kittens have not been fed regularly for weeks. She feels bad, but doesn't want to feed them.
My heart breaks and I went to bed thinking about them. It's a hard world for small things.
This morning we got up and Doug immediately went for coffee. The ice cream shop up the block has coffee and baked goods in the morning. He brought me a muffin, and I ate it but probably should not have. It was amazing. But.
He wanted to watch the football game in London but the TV in the room doesn't have NFL network, so we got in the car and headed over to the park to walk up to the Assateague Lighthouse. I did the thing I usually do when I see people trying to take selfies of large groups and also get something like a lighthouse in the background, I offered to take photos.
I took pictures of a family of 10, some folks from England (party of 6), and a mom and dad and their little girl. There was a bridal party having their Girls' Weekend (how unique and wonderful to come here instead of get fucked up in New Orleans!) and when I saw all the matching shirts, I offered to take a picture for them, but two of their party were way off looking into the woods with some other people. They probably saw ponies through the trees. Where we were standing, we saw one pony way off in the distance.
Doug wanted to keep walking so, we did. We went to the visitors' center, played some pokemon, and then drove to the Woodland Trail. It is a long, all flat, deep woods walk. No ponies visible at the pony overlook, but, about 2/3 of the way around the trail we met a Sika Deer. It ran in front of us, and stood in the rushes and eyeballed us.
So. We eyeballed it back.
To be honest, I probably took about 200 pictures of it, and it was lovely. Just nibbling grass and looking at us. We were about 10 feet from it, and I was just having a nice conversation with it.
A couple of girls came by with german shepherds (sidenote: Dogs are not allowed in the park, but, when there is no park rangers at the gate, and only one or two small signs indicating dogs (even in cars) are not allowed, well, can't blame them if they didn't know or chose not to pay attention).
I warned the wee deer that they were coming, and I asked it to stay put, and not run, everything would be okay. I actually had visions in my head of the poor wee deer running across the path, the dogs losing their minds and chasing it. I was expecting chaos. Luckily, the dogs were oblivious, their human wouldn't even let them come say hi to us, so they were at a good distance. Whew. Dodged a bullet.
Turning back to the deer, I told it that I was very proud of it for being so brave. Then we left, thanking it for its time. This was special.
We didn't see any more ponies today.
Back to the hotel, we walked over to Steamers for late lunch/early dinner. I haven't been doing a good job eating my well timed meals over the past couple days and today was really whack. Doug wanted to watch football and they had NFL Sunday Ticket and the Steelers had their asses handed to them while we enjoyed some seafood. I had probably the best scallops I've had in years, and passed the hush puppies to Doug.
We took big naps after linner, and woke up at 7:30. My blood sugar was still high, and at about 8:30 I mentioned to Doug we should go out and get snacks. I'm not used to the badness of my previous way of eating one meal a day and then nothing at all. We went across the street and the restaurant was still open, so I got crab chowder, and a side of broccoli.
Doug got a fried cod sandwich and basically said it was the worst thing he's eaten in years. He didn't touch the french fries after eating one, and he feels sick right now. Maybe we should have just gone to the Sunoco and gotten cheese and pepperoni or something.
My chowder was pretty great though, so I'm sorry his food was garbage. And you can't fuck up broccoli, unless you really really try.
I believe the plan for tomorrow is we're going to drive up to Berlin MD. I have a high school friend who lives there, she recently got divorced, and this was their summer/vacation place. So he bought her out of their house not too far from where we live, and she's living there permanently now. We haven't seen each other since 1984. Thanks to Facebook, we've been back in close contact, and I can't drive by her house in good conscience, especially because she messaged me to invite us. That would be rude. I hate when people are in DC, so close to me, and they know I'm there but can't make time to say hi. I'm looking forward to it. Doug isn't so sure.
And then, probably over to the other Pony Island at Assateague in Maryland. Doug wants to see the pony scene there, to see if you can get closer to them. He kind of feels like this whole pony thing over here is crap. The ponies are too far away, there are not as many as he'd been previously led to believe, so harumph. Show this man some more damn ponies!
The slow internet here isn't allowing me to upload an image to this entry so just imagine a cute deer. I'll put it in when we're home tomorrow. Come back and visit.
digits
exercise: Thanks to that great trail, a solid 53 minutes. And we did walk up to the lighthouse but the fitbit didn't register that as timed walking. I'll say today was a solid hour. 11,333 steps as of this writing. First time I've broken 10k in a really long time (August 18th to be exact). Yay!
blood glucose:
9:30am: 193
9:30am: 193
5pm: 294 (uhh. okay, again, thanks banana muffin)
11pm: 217
food:
Coffee, water
9:15am: banana chocolate walnut muffin (sorry, blood sugar) from Mister Whippy
4:30pm: Metformin; fried scallops, green beans, cole slaw, 2 beers
9pm: crab chowder, broccoli and butter; metformin+jardiance
9:15am: banana chocolate walnut muffin (sorry, blood sugar) from Mister Whippy
4:30pm: Metformin; fried scallops, green beans, cole slaw, 2 beers
9pm: crab chowder, broccoli and butter; metformin+jardiance
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