Day 4: Fall 2023 Adventure: I’m glad I spent it with you; Assateague Island State Park, MD

Oh what a glorious start to the day. We slept with the windows open on the southeast side of the van and that allowed sunrise to peek in and wake me up. I had a nice look for a bit and then closed the blinds to get some more sleep. No pictures cause, well, I just watched. I checked the battery voltage while I was awake and we were sitting at 12.5v. Pretty darn good for running the fridge all night.

For today’s morning walk I wanted to get to the lookout at the apogee of the pedestrian bridge over the bay. The pedestrian bridge is adjacent to the vehicle bridge. Off I went. It wasn’t too long before I spotted my first horse in a campsite. Then another, and another. I crossed over onto the national seashore road and saw some more. Then as I turned to the bridge, one special horse seemed to want to come with me.

He just meandered along, stopping traffic until he finally moved of the road and joined me (at a respectable distance) on the pedestrian / bicycle path. I say “he”, I did not look close enough and I’m unsure of the proper horse pronoun to use when unsure of a horse’s gender. Eventually he gave up and wandered over into the marsh areas. Perhaps I was too fast.

I didn’t linger too long on the bridge lookout as I still don’t like edges too much. Chances are I will never like edges. Does that make me an edge case? I stopped to get a shot of the horse warning sign as you enter the park area.

After returning from the walk, it was usual breakfast and then we got ready to go to the beach. We hit the beach around 1000. Our accessories were our Costco camp chairs, tiny umbrellas and hats. Mrs Milddogs did remind me that we had discussed bringing a beach umbrella. It was pretty wavy most of the day, but not as bad as yesterday. We had full sun and a high temperature around 25C. We saw a pod of dolphins go by heading east (or, what i call north). It was magic. They were a bit playful and that was fun to watch. The pictures don’t really show them well, this despite the 3X optical zoom on my iPhone.

I popped over to the van to make some lunch and just as I returned, Mrs Milddogs was pointing to the water where another large pod of dolphins were swimming past. What you say? Milddogs made lunch? Sure did! Never a better wrap was made! I’ll stop raving about the dolphins. They went past us 5 or 6 times over the day.

We both got into the ocean for a swim. We were a bit hesitant because it was a little chilly (but not bad) and a bit wavy. But in we went. If the 80 year old dude down the beach can do it, so can we. That 80 year old dude was a powerhouse! He went in the water many times throughout the day and even got completely knocked over by a huge wave. That dude is hero material!

After about 6 hours at the beach we headed back to the van to organize for dinner. Showers first to get rid of the sand, salt and sunscreen. Dinner was some brisket chilli Mrs Milddogs had brought along served with in store made corn chips from the Food Lion (still not quite as good as the H.E.B). While we ate, the turkey sized seagulls sat up on the dunes watching us eat.

We went for a walk along the beach post dinner heading towards the southwest (I think that was the direction). Yup, more dolphins! At the Loop H(N) beach access path we headed over to the road hoping to see some horses as we walked back. No luck on the horses but we did catch sunset!

We spent some time contrasting this beach with Mustang Island State Park in Texas. In Texas, they have garbage cans every 100 yards (or less) and they are often overflowing. There is recent garbage all over the place and plenty of plastics washed in by the ocean. Not a pretty picture, because it isn’t always pretty. Here, there are no garbage cans, there is no garbage on the beach and no washed up plastics. Texas can’t control all of the washed up plastic cause, well, Gulf of Mexico currents and hurricanes and lots of garbage strewn islands in the Caribbean, but they should be able to control all of the crap people drop all over the beach. Maybe because it is pack it in, pack it out at this park, people are more careful. Maybe the volunteer network is better here and they work harder. Even the campsites here are spotless. Texas was more like Ontario Provincial Parks where the customers are slovenly and no one cleans up after them. Anyway, well done Maryland and patrons of this park!

Oh, they have those little burrs here and they call them “stickers”. Boy do they stick. The fun part is that removing them just results in them embedded in your fingers, then your other fingers and repeat as you continually try to get rid of them. Tomorrow I will be more careful of where I step!

It was a perfect day. Tomorrow we are supposed to move somewhere else. We shall see what the day holds for us.

I had a beer. A Busch Light. I should pick up some Bud Light to show some solidarity. Except I don’t really like Bud Light.