We originally planned a three-day trip for bird-watching and coastal hiking on the Delaware coastline, but a late-winter thunderstorm shortened it to an out-and-back weekend jaunt through the Delmarva Peninsula.
Recently, in an effort to get better acquainted with my home for the past four and next three (hopefully! we shall see this week) years, I've been reading books about the maritime history of the Chesapeake. In particular, The Disappearing Islands of the Chesapeake is a photographic and historical survey of various small bodies of land in and around the Bay. William Cronin brings these places to life Island by island, sadly emphasizing how natural erosion and anthropogenic global warming are submerging many of them beneath the tides. Haunting were these images of docks and lighthouses, schoolyards and cemeteries, some taken as recently as the 1970s, that are now, per a footnote or a photo caption, completely underwater. Further readings were An Island Out of Time by Baltimore reporter Tom Horton, and Beautiful Swimmers by William Warner - both excellent books about the crab and oyster fisheries of the Chesapeake, and the watermen and island communities that are intertwined with them.
As expected, all this reading about crabs for steaming, crabs for picking, soft-shell crabs for frying or broiling - led to a righteous, stomach-fueled craving to head east and spend some more time on the peninsula, most of which (everything aside from Ocean City, MD and Assateague Island) we had never visited before.
So it was that last Saturday, Jane and I drove out from Baltimore, heading north past the Susquehanna into Delaware, and down the coastal highway toward the beach towns of the Atlantic coast. We arrived at the Bombay Hook National Refuge shortly after sunrise, and spent the morning walking its small trails and driving beside the expansive tidal marshes. This is one of the best bird-watching spots along the entire Atlantic fly-way; sadly, we arrived perhaps a week or two too late to see all the waterfowl before their northbound departure. Still, a breathtaking place where we saw many species of ducks, grebes, geese, tundra swans, herons, ospreys, and one bald eagle - not to mention countless swifts and red-wing blackbirds.
Our next stop was the coastal town of Lewes, where we enjoyed pasta lunch at Taste of Italy and browsed a used bookstore (a recurring theme in our travels). At nearby Cape Henlopen, we picked up a pair of bikes and helmets (free 2-hour rentals courtesy of the park volunteer organization), and set off across the beach dunes on our little cruisers. The Cape has a wonderfully maintained, wonderfully flat loop of bike paths, so that even I, as a fervent disliker of kinetic energy, felt fairly comfortable on the pedals. At what was formerly the U.S. naval base of Fort Miles, we passed several World War II era bunkers and missile batteries, their doors padlocked shut. We stopped to climb the rusty staircase up an old observation tower near the coast; at the top, one wonders how it felt to stand there barely two generations ago, watching for invaders from air and sea. After returning our bikes, we drove to the Point of the Cape, where the tidal dunes are protected as a mating ground for endangered skimmers and terns. I did a bit more photo work on the beach, where the East End Lighthouse and the beachfront houses of Lewes are visible across the tidal bay and the rolling mounds of sand. Jane found a horseshoe crab shell, long abandoned on the edge of the water.
We spent the evening at an eerie version of Rehoboth Beach, for which we were too early for spring breakers and much too early for the high season. Through some coupon cleverness and off-season thriftiness, I booked an oceanfront resort room for $26, leading Jane to issue this rare and mighty proclamation upon opening the door: "This is actually not bad."
We had dinner at the Henlopen Oyster House and ate ice cream on a boardwalk utterly deserted by 7 pm. The next morning, I caught sunrise on the beach while Jane slept in; we fled back across the Eastern Shore as the rain set in, stopping for a lunch of soft-shell crabs and crab cakes at Harris Crab House on Kent Island. We were back in Baltimore by Sunday afternoon.
