I decided to not blog over the weekend with all that we had going on. Quick and dirty update: Fun stuff happened.
More detailed update....
Jess got here very late on Friday night. They left around 9am, and traffic just kept getting worse and worse as they headed south. The GPS ended up routing through Scranton PA, down 81, which is way out of the way, but it was that bad. That bad that not going through NJ but going to Harrisburg was a better option.
Friday of a holiday weekend. Of course.
After arriving, we had wine and snacks and chatted until 1am.
Saturday, they headed to DC in the afternoon to connect with the person they're house sitting for. Meet the cat. Easy trip in from here on the Metro. We were going to connect in DC and head over to a brewery but Doug took a nap and it was kind of too late for schlepping into town. We had Jess come back here (they were staying here Saturday night anyway). We ordered a big lamb dinner from the greek restaurant the next town over.
We had several "special occasion" bottles and just kept cracking them open.
Because this was a special occasion. Both of our kids, fancy little dainty glasses, and exotic little concoctions.
We found that a spicy pepper mead that we'd picked up in Pennsylvania this summer mixed really well with this ginger wine, so that was the winner of the night.
The worst one was a tomato wine that Doug and I picked up in Canada several years ago when we were there for our anniversary.
I remember it being really good when we sampled it, but hey.... I guess it just did not age well. Ooooof this was nasty. We felt bad for the tomatoes that gave their lives for this. Sorry, tomatoes.
On Sunday, Doug and I left to go to the Eastern Shore. We had planned this as a full leave Friday or Saturday kind of thing but with Jess visiting we dropped it to just Sunday night. I had Monday off, he took it off. Let's go.
In theory, this should be an easy zippy trip but it never ever is. Does not matter at what time you leave, something is always a problem. Once you get there it's great. Super happy fun times. But yeah. Such a schlep.
We stopped in Salisbury to have late lunch at Evolution Brewing.
The waitress didn't even ask us if we wanted inside or outside, which was weird. Seeing as it was so incredibly beautiful, it would have been nice to be out. But. She planted us inside, and Doug didn't argue or suggest otherwise. At least we got to watch football. Our waiter was super sweet, I really liked talking to him.
The food wasn't as good as the last time we were there. We both got crab soup and Doug thinks his was off. Mine was fine, but he got a wicked stomach ache and was sick the rest of the trip. Because I didn't get the same impact, I don't think he got food poisoning, but I also don't know what he did get.
I ordered a salad with steak on it, which came with 3 measly pieces of steak that were cold, overcooked, and rubbery. Way too much salad for one human to eat.
The beer was good though.
Off to Assateague, to gawk at horses.
We got there late in the day and I guess that's not prime horse gawking time. We only saw a few right by where you take the bridge onto the island.
We drove to the ranger station, paid to get into the Fee Use area, and drove to the end of the regular car road parking lot.
We sat on the beach for a while - it was crazy windy, and it felt like thousands of little needles. Children were crying. No horses were around. We opted to get back in the car and drive back north, pulling off to the bay side of the island to take little walks and look at para gliders and birds.
I think I took 100 pictures of these birds that were just hanging out by the boardwalk where we parked. There were ponies but they were super far out there on the islands.
After some time, we left and headed to our hotel. Doug picked this one because it was right on the beach with a balcony looking out at the ocean. Doug can be notoriously "thrifty" with hotels, as we do know, but I was willing to let this one be a thing for one night.
The Dunes Suites is at the very north end of the OC Boardwalk, seemingly so far away from everything. For an October date, that's fine and great.
The hotel itself is a little confusing because there are two hotels - Dunes Suites and Dunes Court. You check in at Dunes Court, and then park in between the buildings. Shotgun shack style - you enter the room on the West side with the stairs and the elevator, and you walk through to the balcony on the East.
It was nice. Under $100 and not a murder hotel. Well then. Wow. Okay! Doug took a nap and I sat out on the balcony. It was getting a little chilly, but the exhaust from the air conditioning unit was rather nice. I felt like taking a walk, or going over to 7-11 to get a bottle of wine for myself but a friend called me on the phone and we had a good long talk.
Doug woke up still feeling horrible, and he sat with me for a while. As it got to dark, I said I really would like to have a walk and get the sitting in the car blues out of my body. He agreed, and I'm glad he did. We walked 11 minutes down the boardwalk, enjoying the night and the lack of humans. There were some, but it wasn't shoulder to shoulder packed. This was very nice. We stopped and sat for a while, and Doug encouraged me to get dinner but the only thing open was a pasta and pizza joint. I was tempted but I passed on it. I was still full from Giant Salad, so meh. No.
I did have a headache though, so we walked back up the boardwalk, and crossed the busy street to get to the 7-11. The nearest CVS was closed. Doug wanted some ginger ale, so we got what we needed, and headed back to the room. We watched football for a little while, and I fell asleep at halftime.
Aren't we exciting?
He asked me to set an alarm, so I did. I also opened the blinds a little so the light would start to peep through and maybe wake me up some.
It did just that. Around 6:30, before the alarm would be going off, the sky was changing. I was worried about all the clouds on the horizon, that we wouldn't be able to see the sun coming out, but she did not disappoint.
We saw the sliver of coral orange out there, and watched her rise up. Great show. And then she went behind the clouds but this wasn't bad. It caused some dramatic light ray effects up into the sky.
I maybe took 2000 pictures of the sunrise.
We went back to bed, and Doug woke back up around 9. I woke up at 9:30. He made hotel room coffee, and since there was no milk, I didn't have any. I cannot drink black coffee for the life of me. We got ready and by 10:30am we were checked out and on our way back to Pony Gawk. After a stop at Dunkin Donuts for some coffee!
I will say, I'll stay at the Dunes Suites again. For sure. Additionally, there is a Steelers Football Bar a block away from the hotel. Had Doug not felt like shit, we probably would have landed there for a dinner or drinks or something. As was, he needed to rest, drink ginger ale, and not do anything else.
The ponies must really like mornings. They were everywhere. And people were pulled over all over the place to take pictures and check them out. And this one little pull out, there were maybe 6 or 7 horses, they were not shy about walking wherever they wanted. You're not supposed to get close to them, but they'll get close to you. So you need to back away.
We went back to the boardwalk where I took the millions of bird photos and horses were literally right there next to the boardwalk with the paparazzi all around them. We sat on a bench and watched from a ways off. Doug thinks they enjoy the attention, they're completely unbothered it seems. I did go up and take a couple more pictures of them, especially this one guy with the hairdo.
Next, we walked a boardwalk trail called Life of the Forest. It wasn't a very long boardwalk, so Doug enjoyed some distant gazing and I did steps to get 16 minutes of something so it would register on the fitbit as exercise. We drove further south, back to the parking area from the day before and we did the Life of the Dunes trail (the only one we didn't do was Life of the Marsh).
This was a good challenge. I had on sneakers because I'd left my hiking sandals home on accident. The sand was hard to walk on, but there's a section of this trail that used to be paved road. Back in 1962, a storm wiped out the progress of paving this area, and they abandoned their plans to make this section of the island like Ocean City (thank goodness). But the road is still there. Baltimore Boulevard in several sections is there for walking and climbing on. It made the walk a little easier except for the getting up and down off of it.
I'm not as young as I once was.
It is a loop trail, and at the top of the loop (or bottom, since we're walking south) there's a platform but no benches. It was a good place to rest. A trio of women came from the opposite direction, and they asked how far the trail was to go back to the car. We told them they were basically at the halfway point, and showed them on the Pokemon Go map (we didn't have a paper map) where we were. They were from Boston, and we had a nice chat about the park and the ponies.
They continued counter clockwise and we continued clockwise. This stretch of trail was further west and in, so the trees were bigger and there was some really nice shade. It was still a bit of a challenge for me but your girl did it.
So yesterday's exercise was notable, not just a walk around the living room. My favorite thing about the fitbit is it tracks my pulse too, so a GOOD walk gets you up out of the moderate to vigorous range. Yesterday's 2 half mile+ jaunts got me from vigorous to peak.
Walking on sand will do that.
We were happy to get back to the car, and I was thankful that I packed water. I think that's why I had a headache on Sunday, I didn't have enough water. Several swigs later, we headed back out to the highway and into Berlin.
Doug wanted to stop at Burley Oak Brewing and get some take home beers. I have a friend who lives close by, so I told her we were headed there for a quick stop, and wanted to see if she was up for a drive by hug.
I thought we'd just do that drive by hug but Doug encouraged me to have a beer with my friend. He passed on having some because he knew he would be sleepy on the way home if he did, so D and I each had some beer and we got caught up.
I missed our 40th high school reunion back in August because of On The Ocean (well, did I really miss it? I mean. I keep in touch with people I want to keep in touch with, and I didn't really see the point in spending over 100 bucks to ... go to this). She was one of the coordinators, and to be honest, to support her would have been the only reason for me to go.
But .... Guster and visiting my mom will win every time.
Traffic was fantastic until we got within five miles of our house. Happy to be home but would have liked one more October day and night in Ocean City.
I tracked digits and foods but won't report them from Friday to Monday. Suffice to say, they were all pretty good. Today's are below me and D at the brewery.
Oh, and I got 2 days of 10k+ steps on Sunday and Monday. Whew!
digits
exercise: 12/12 hours. didn't get a dedicated walk. 5700+ steps by bedtime
blood glucose:
8:30am: 168
4:15pm: 141
10:30pm: 191
food:
coffee/water
11:30am: Metformin
12:30pm: left over greek salad w/bacon thrown in, mayo
4:15pm: apple w/pb
6:30pm: metformin+jardiance
7:15pm: plate of pasta shells w/ meat sauce (heavy on the meat) and slice of garlic bread
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