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In previous years (especially since my husband left) there were times when I went to Tysons Corner Center anywhere between 2-4 times a year. In 2023 I only went there once and it was on my birthday. It seems like ever since the Disney Store went out of business I feel less inclined to go there. Yes, there’s still the American Girl Place but that store is so expensive. They sell doll clothes that cost around the same price (if not higher, depending on the outfit) as what I would buy for myself at Target or Walmart. I’m just not into going into stores where the prices are too high for my taste because they are a total waste of time.
I still like going to American Girl Place to check out the dolls, it’s just that I don’t feel inclined to do so very often because most of their stuff is out of my price range.
So my birthday came around and I realized that I hadn’t set foot inside of Tysons Corner Center in 2023 so I decided to go there for my birthday before 2023 ends in 16 days.
I took the Silver Line Metro to Tysons Corner Center and took the pedestrian bridge to Metro Plaza (which is directly outside of the mall and is the closest location to the Metro station). They had these really cool Christmas/winter-themed sculptures that glistened in the sunlight.
They had this Christmas tree sculpture with a red sled inside (so anyone can sit in there and take selfies).
Here’s the red sled where one can sit in and take selfies.
And if those sculptures looked neat in the daytime, they looked even more amazing at night. I took these photos when I was leaving the mall and I was on my way back to the Metro station.
Inside of the mall they had these artsy customized athletic shoes on display, which were pretty cool.
The display said that more of these customized shoes were being displayed on the lower level near Barnes and Noble. Except I went to that area and I found no customized shoe display, which was a bummer. At least the two shoes I saw looked cool.
As a birthday treat for myself I purchased a hand-rolled ice cream from Sawadika Ice Cream. Seeing the worker make this is just as big of a treat as the ice cream itself.
Here is what my Oreo cookies and cream ice cream treat looked like after it was made but before I ate it.
After Sawadika Ice Cream I made my way to the American Girl Place, which had this Christmas Tree.
The first doll I got a look at in detail was this limited edition Shimmering Silver Holiday Collector Doll. It’s a collaboration with Swarovski so the doll has those expensive Swarovsi crystals in her jewelry and her outfit.
The doll came in this box that is printed to suggest something sparkly.
In some ways that doll reminded me of the elf queen Galadriel from movie trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, except this doll doesn’t have pointed ears.
I took a liking to that doll. In fact, I briefly felt tempted to buy her until I saw the $265 price tag. I know that most of the huge price is because of the Swarovski crystals but it’s still a pretty steep price for a doll that was originally created for young girls to play with.
They had a Hanukkah outfit with a little menorah that’s perfect for a doll. It was pretty cute.
Part of the reason why I wanted to get to the American Girl Place before 2023 ended is because I hadn’t had a chance to see the 2023 Girl of the Year in person. It turned out that there were three years of Girl of the Year dolls. I saw that the 2022 Girl of the Year, Corinne Tan, and her sister, Gwynn, were still on the store shelves.
I wrote about Corinne and Gwynn Tan last year so I’m going to move on to the 2023 Girl of the Year, whom I hadn’t seen until my birthday trip.
For the 2023 Girl of the Year they had an Indian-American girl named Kavi Sharma. She is described as being into songwriting, showtunes, dancing, and performing. She is very pretty.
I especially loved her traditional Indian outfit, which is currently sold separately.
I also loved her furniture and accessories. I found myself wishing that there were human-sized versions because I would love to have them in my own home.
That music note neon sculpture is to die for!
Kavi definitely has a sense of style that is quite unusual for a young girl between the ages of 8-11.
Kavi also honors her Indian heritage by practicing yoga.
Here is where the Girl of the Year gets really crazy. In the past American Girl would do this: First, the company would send a representative to the ABC show Good Morning America where that rep would announce on the air who the new Girl of the Year will be. Good Morning America would air that episode as close to New Year’s Day as possible. (The show itself airs Monday-Friday so if January 1 happens to fall on a Monday, the announcement would be made on the Friday episode.) On January 1 the new Girl of the Year would formally rollout at American Girl Place stores across the United States. (I went to such a New Year’s Day rollout once. It was in 2015, the year that Grace Thomas was the Girl of the Year, and I went to the Tysons Corner Center store.) Once the new Girl of the Year doll was given the formal rollout, the previous year’s Girl of the Year doll would be retired and both the doll and all of the line’s clothes and accessories would be removed from the store shelves.
In the last few years the previous year’s Girl of the Year dolls would remain on the shelves beyond her year and seeing Corinne and Gwyn Tan still remaining on the shelves after their year of 2022 ended was no exception.
But this year had a surprise I didn’t expect. I assumed that the 2024 Girl of the Year wouldn’t be formally rolled out until January 1 so she wouldn’t be on the store shelves yet. I was shocked to see that the 2024 Girl of the Year was already available for sale even though the new year hadn’t arrived yet.
Her name is Lila Monetti. She’s described as an Italian-American who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota and she’s into gymnastics. She is a cute doll.
There was a time when the area in the next picture would have a giant poster featuring who the current Girl of the Year was and would include some life-sized prop (such as a surfboard) where people can take selfies. After the COVID-19 pandemic began the store stopped having the life-sized props because they were trying to limit any chance of viral contact but they still stuck with giant poster featuring who the current Girl of the Year was. Since the American Girl Place now sells three year’s worth of Girl of the Year, I think someone probably said “Fuck it! Let’s just put up a generic ‘AG’ poster so we won’t have to change it each year since we now have multiple Girls of the Year on sale.”
Then there are the historical doll line. American Girl has finally ditched that BeForever name. I personally never liked it because it felt grammatically awkward and it just sounded dumb, especially when pronouncing it. In any case, American Girl decided to come out with two new historical dolls that would represent 1999-2000. That was Y2K, which had all of this crazy hysteria over the coming of the Y2K bug (which never happened because computer experts had worked around the clock to prevent anything disruptive from shutting down the world’s computers). But American Girl decided to come out with two dolls to educate its target audience of girls ages 8-12 about that time when people literally became paranoid and lost their minds over the Y2K bug.
American Girl thought that it would be a great idea to not come out with one doll but two dolls as well. They are supposed to be twins. American Girl decided to make them fraternal twins instead of identical (to reduce the chances that families would try to save money by buying only one doll and get their daughter to one day pretend that her doll is Nicki and the next day she would pretend that her doll is Isabel). They also decided to give the twins radically different personalities with different senses of clothing style. That way parents can spend at least $230 getting both twins. It’s a win—for American Girl.
So now let’s meet the twins. Isabel Hoffman prefers to dress as a preppy. (She definitely reminds me of Cher from the 1995 movie Clueless.)
Nicki Hoffman is a skateboard enthusiast and her dress style reminds me of a cross between Tony Hawk and the Seattle grunge music scene of the early 1990s.
Their vintage 1990s computer equipment brought back memories for me. I still remember having to connect to the Internet via a modem that was connected to a telephone line and it made this horrible screeching noise every time you logged on.
If American Girl hadn’t decided to have fraternal twins represent the 1990s, I probably would have bought one 1990s historical girl to go with Melody (representing the 1960s), Julie and Ivy (representing the 1970s, and Courtney (representing the 1990s). But I wasn’t into spending at least $230 to get both twins. I guess I could’ve just decided on one but I couldn’t decide which twin I wanted. They both appealed to me in different ways. I decided to solve the dilemma by giving these two dolls a hard pass.
The other thing I learned is that the historical dolls no longer come with paperback books that tells the full story of the characters. Instead each historical doll will only come with a paperback journal and if you want to get the complete story about the doll’s background, you would have to purchase the official book that’s sold separately. I thought about doing just that until I learned that the only copy of Nicki and Isabel’s official book comes in hardcover only and it costs $25.
While I would love to read their book just to see how American Girl handles the Y2K bug controversy, I wasn’t into paying $25 for a hardcover book. I’m just going to check that book out of the public library instead.
I briefly checked out Claudie Wells, the historical doll who’s supposed to represent the 1920s. They had a bakery just for Claudie. It’s a less fancy version of that French bakery that came out in 2015 when Grace Thomas was the Girl of the Year that cost a whopping $500.
Claudie’s bakery cost $295. It’s cheaper than Grace’s bakery was back in 2015 but it’s still way too pricey for me.
After I left American Girl Place I took a couple of photos of that fancy Santa’s Chalet area where Santa Claus was working.
I ate my birthday dinner at Wasabi, the Japanese place that serves sushi on a conveyor belt, just like this video that I shot back in 2011.
After dinner I purchased a bag of gummi bears from Lolli & Pops. I also walked around a few stores. I found this racy Christmas sweater from Spencer’s Gifts that had a winking Santa coming down the chimney saying “I Like to Go Down.”
As I was making my way back to the Metro station I found out that the Winter Lantern Festival was being held just across the street from the Metro station. If I hadn’t been so completely exhausted from walking around Tysons Corner Center, I would’ve gone there as well. But I was too tired. The lights from the Winter Lantern Festival made the whole area really stand out in the darkness.
I’m still going through some things that my late mother had saved and I found this old ink drawing of a tennis shoe that I did as a teenager.
Given the skilled drawing, I’m pretty sure that I did this one as part of an art class assignment when I was either in middle school or high school because my drawing skills began to improve the older I got. I normally didn’t draw mundane things like tennis shoes unless the teacher told me to as a graded assignment. I also drew this one on newsprint paper using a blue ball-point ink pen. I’m amazed that this drawing has survived all those years since newsprint paper tends to be flimsy. It figures that my mother would’ve kept it because that assignment was so mundane that I had completely forgotten that I ever did it.
I’m kind of glad that my mother had kept it because it reminded me of how far I’ve gone from the drawings I did when I was in elementary school. It also reminded me of how I’ve definitely improved my drawing skills even more since I graduated from high school.
I decided to attend the German Festival one more year even though that festival has fewer vendors than in years past and this year was no different. (For comparison, here are the photos I took at the same event in 2013, 2014, 2017, 2019, 2021, and 2022.) Last year I ended up driving to the festival due to the Baltimore Light Rail system being unreliable. A few weeks earlier I drove to the Maryland Toy Expo at the same location and the parking lot was crowded because the toy expo was one of three simultaneous events that were happening at the same time.
So this year I decided to take a chance on driving to the North Linthicum Light Rail stop then taking the light rail train to Timonium. The train arrived on schedule and I was able to go to and from the festival via light rail with no problem at all.
I arrived at the festival on a very hot day. It was the usual summer day with high heat and high humidity so walking from the light rail stop to the building where the festival was held felt like an eternity.
This year’s festival was around the same size as last year’s festival with fewer vendors than when I began going to this event ten years earlier. I ended up taking far fewer pictures than previous years.
I saw one vendor selling a line of German-imported beer steins. It brought back memories of when my late father used to collect them. (I think he either had ordered them from a catalogue or maybe he bought them from some local store that sold them.) I got sticker shock with these beer steins because their prices started at $125. I really now regret not taking one or two of my late father’s beer steins when my mother decided to put the house up for sale and I had the opportunity to take whatever I wanted from that house since my mother couldn’t take everything with her.
The traditional German lederhosen looked nice but they were also expensive as well.
They had other stuff (such as stuffed teddy bears dressed in traditional German clothes) but they weren’t all that different from what I saw on sale last year so I didn’t bother with taking photos of them this time around.
Here are a few photos I shot of men dressed as circa-1700s or 1800s German soldiers.
There was one new thing that I don’t recall seeing before at previous festivals. There was this large beer barrel.
There was an option to actually ride on a beer barrel. No, I didn’t do it myself (mainly because I think I’m way too big for that ride) but I was lucky enough to see a boy who took such a ride. First he was strapped on the beer barrel so he wouldn’t slip off.
Then a bunch of men lifted the contraption that the beer barrel was on and gave the boy a ride throughout the festival.
If you think the photos of that ride looked cool, you should check out the video that I shot. I uploaded it on TikTok, Clapper, Instagram, and YouTube.
I only shot one other video during my time there. I briefly went outside to shoot some footage of a band playing polka music. I didn’t stay outside too long because it was very hot and humid. (The temperature was in the mid-90s.) I uploaded it on TikTok, Clapper, Instagram, and YouTube.
Ever since I started going to these festivals I’ve always noticed that there were elderly people who played with these wooden percussion instruments that looked like three crab mallets nailed together. This year I finally decided to ask these people what those instruments were. It turns out that they call them klackers. They don’t know how the term came about, they’ve simply always called them klackers.
These people are from a group known as the Baltimore Klacker Klub.
Now here’s the weird part. When I did a Google search on klackers after I returned home, most of the searches pointed towards clackers, a type of toy that was around for a brief moment when I was a kid (I still recall kids taking their clackers to school and showing them off) until they were banned after too many kids were injured as a result of playing with them. There were literally no percussion instruments known as klackers that were in the above photos.
So I wonder what the real name of these instruments are. I don’t know if I’ll ever find out because I don’t even know what to do first to find the answer.
The festival was okay but it was still a bit of a letdown compared to ten years ago. The only thing I managed to accomplish was something that I had been meaning to do for the past couple of years but I never got around to doing it until this year. I signed up for a membership in the German American Associations in Maryland. I had the option of either paying $25 for one year or $250 for a lifetime membership. I decided to go with one year because I don’t know if it’ll work out for me or not. If I end up really liking that organization, I’ll pay for the lifetime membership next year.
I joined because I’m looking for new friends. My church congregation, where I’ve met the vast majority of my friends as an adult, isn’t doing too well these days. The church building has been put up for sale and now the various members are at each other’s throats on Facebook. I don’t want to go into details here but it’s really a sad situation. In addition, many longtime members of my church has died over the past three years. So I’m basically hemorrhaging friends due to circumstances beyond my control.
So I’ll just wait and see what the German American Associations in Maryland has to offer in terms of meeting new friends.
I only purchased one other thing at the festival. It’s two bars of handmade soaps from a local vendor known as Towson Soaps.
Last December I ordered a sweatshirt from a Ukrainian website, which didn’t arrive until a few weeks ago. Of course the delay was due to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine but it arrived nonetheless. I’m pretty happy with it so far. (I’ve only had it for about two weeks.) The quality seems pretty solid and it has held up after I washed it once. It’s too early to determine how well it will hold up to normal wear and tear.
I made a quick unboxing video of that sweatshirt that I uploaded on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
The sweatshirt depicts a dog who is probably the second biggest famous Ukrainian behind President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. His name is Patron (whose name means “bullet” or “cartridge” in Ukrainian) and he is a landmine sniffing dog who is trying to do everything possible to undo what the Russians have done to their land by burying those awful landmines that only exist to either kill or blow off the limbs of any random unsuspecting person (including a child) who’s unlucky enough to inadvertently walk on one.
Patron has become so famous for his landmine sniffing work that he has his own Wikipedia page. He has a huge following on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. He has a Patreon account where 100% of the funds will go to sappers like him (both human and canine) that will help support their effort to eliminate all buried landmines from Ukraine. A Ukrainian band known as Karta Svitu has recorded this incredibly catchy song about him called “Pes Patron” (whose title translates as “Dog Patron” or “Patron Dog” or “Patron the Dog”).
He is even the star of his own animation series that is available on his YouTube channel. The animation is in Ukrainian but it has English subtitles.
If you like the sweatshirt I featured in my own short video, you can order it—along with lots of other Patron swag like hats, keychains, and t-shirts—from Patron’s own online store. All of the proceeds from the sale on that website is going to help support sappers like Patron—both human and animal. If you’re not in the mood to buy anything online, you can still help out Patron and his fellow sappers by either making an online donation to the Patron Dog Fund or by becoming a paying member of his Patreon account.
I was at Walmart recently when I purchased this Stitch sweatshirt on impulse for only $13. It basically says “Stitch Ohana” with a bunch of different writings related to Stitch and the traditional Hawaiian concept of Ohana (which permeates throughout the Disney movie Lilo & Stitch).
I know that it’s not directly related to Valentine’s Day but my family has long celebrated it as love between family members as well as romantic love. We used to give each other cards and we would eat candy, especially heart-shaped chocolate candy and the tiny Necco hearts that would have messages on them. So it would be appropriate to remember the family on Valentine’s Day.
I also purchased that sweatshirt in a larger size than what I usually wear. That’s because two years ago I purchased a different Stitch sweatshirt from Walmart that was also incredibly cute yet cheaply priced and it grew tight on me after a couple of washings. I ended up donating it to the free clothing rack that’s located outside of The Space for anyone to take for their own wardrobe. I’m hoping that with a larger size I can keep my new Stitch sweatshirt around with me much longer than three or four months.
A little over a week ago the Greenbelt Museum had a free admission day event where it featured a special display of vintage 1930s Valentine’s Day cards and decoration. I decided to check it out. They had sheet music and magazines on display.
They had vintage cards and heart-shaped candy boxes.
Okay, I’ll admit that the heart-shaped candy boxes didn’t look all that different from what you would find in a store during this time of the year. But I found the cards to be quite lovely to look at. The decorative details in the card in the next picture are amazing to look at.
I found these cards to be quite adorable.
They even had some three-dimensional cards that could stand on their own.
The museum has a visitors center which had a special event where the organizers encouraged the general public to participate in. Basically you were to make a Valentine’s Day card for a sick person in the local hospital. They provided markers where you could either draw something or write a message or both. There were a few rules, which were made on the request of the hospital that the cards were being delivered to. One was to avoid writing “get well.” (I think it’s because some of the patients were dealing with long illnesses, with some of them being terminal.) Another was to avoid signing your own name. Instead you had to sign using a special “Cupid Name” where you went to one of the charts that were hanging on the wall and figure out your name based on the the first initial of your first name and the month that you were born in. So my “Cupid Name” turned out to be “Marvelous Cuddlebug,” so I signed it with that name. So here is what my card looked like.
I’ll admit that what I did isn’t high art. It was something that I thought of on the fly and I worked on it for less than 15 minutes. The organizers liked what I did so it was good enough for them. I was even given my choice of free candy as a reward for creating this card. (The free candy was what enticed many people to make a card. LOL!)
I’ll end this post with a video that was shot in Ukraine on last year’s Valentine’s Day. It shows President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and First Lady Olena Zelenska giving sweet Valentine’s greetings to the Ukrainian people on this day.
Ten days later Russia began its invasion of Ukraine.
Over the years I’ve posted photos of this blog of Christmas sweaters on sale at various retailers during the winter holiday season. I’ve even posted photos of ugly Christmas sweaters. I still remember the year when Target sold a DIY Christmas sweater kit for you to make as tacky looking as possible.
Just when I thought I’ve seen everything when it comes to Christmas sweaters, Walmart starts to sell these Christmas sweaters that will have you scratching your head and go “WTF?!?”
That’s right, Walmart now sells Christmas sweaters with a pouch where you can put your drinking cup in. That’s right, these Christmas sweaters have cup holders that are similar to what you would find in the front seat of a car.
The idea is that you can go to a Christmas party wearing this sweater, put a drink in your sweater sleeve, then keep on socializing without worrying about where have you left your cup.
This has got to be the goofiest idea for a Christmas sweater that I have ever come across.
I don’t know how practical these sweaters are for holding your favorite beer or wine. Suppose the sweater wearer had leaned forward near someone else and his/her drink suddenly spills out of the seater on to that other person. Or suppose the sweater wearer has decided to lean back and that drink falls out of the sweater and it spills all over that sweater wearer.
These Christmas sweaters are simply too weird and bizarre for me to consider buying one.
I went to my second tye-dye day event of the year. This one was held in the parking lot at my church, Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist Church in Adelphi, Maryland. The attendance was very light but the few people who were there went for dyeing their clothes.
One of the teen girls from the church’s Youth Group encouraged her friends to dye her t-shirt while she was still wearing that t-shirt.
I brought a white sweatshirt that I purchased on sale at a local JoAnn’s Fabrics & Crafts. Here is my newly-dyed sweatshirt in the bag after I finished.
Here are a couple of shots of my hands and fingers after I finished with dying my sweatshirt. (It took a couple of days for the dye to entirely fade.)
Here is my newly dyed sweatshirt a day after that event. While I was at JoAnn’s buying the sweatshirt that I dyed, I also purchased a few appliques that I also found on sale (a peace sign, a heart, and a unicorn’s head). I ironed them on the front of my shirt.
Here’s a shot of the back of the sweatshirt.
And here’s a selfie of me modeling my newly-dyed sweatshirt.
I also did a video slideshow of that event, which you can view on TikTok, Clapper, Instagram, and YouTube.
I learned about this event through an ad on Facebook. Apparently the St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Silver Spring, Maryland had long held these festivals but I finally decided to get around to attending one when there’s a war in Ukraine.
I ate dinner there and I found that much of the menu is similar to what I’ve seen at a local German festival (such as having bratwurst and schnitzel). I loved the crafts that were on sale. If only I had more disposable income, I would’ve bought one of those embroidered shirts that looked totally amazing.
As it is I purchased only one thing at the festival. It costs $50 but it still looked cool. It was a two-sided sweatshirt. Here’s the front of the shirt.
Here’s a closeup of the front of the shirt, where you can see pattens inside of the main design, which looks really cool. (I don’t know what this design is called but I’ve seen it often enough in photos and videos about Ukraine.)
Here’s the back of the sweatshirt.
I shot a bunch of photos of that festival while I was there, which I compiled into a video slideshow. You can watch it on TikTok, Clapper, Instagram, and YouTube.
Today was the absolute last day of my trip. I decided to do something that I haven’t done before. Here is some background.
For years I’ve had my LGBTQ friends talk about how much they loved vacationing in Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. That beach resort had long catered to LGBTQ people even in the days when same-sex relationships were frowned upon.
I was always interested in checking it out once but, until my marriage ended, my then-husband used to insist on the two of us vacationing in Ocean City with members of his family for a week each summer. One year one of his relatives wanted to take a side trip to Rehoboth Beach in the morning where we could do some shopping and she invited me to come along. So I agreed figuring that I could at least see what the place was like since so many of my LGBTQ friends loved it so much.
Unfortunately she wasn’t interested in going into downtown Rehoboth Beach itself. Instead she only wanted to shop in the many outlet stores that are located outside of the town. No matter how much I begged her to consider going into the town for at least a half an hour, nothing I said could get her to change her mind about spending all of the time at Rehoboth Beach shopping at the Playtex outlet store then the other outlet stores to buy clothes and kitchen gadgets.
I remember the Playtex outlet the most because there was a bin full of bras which had a deal where if you buy three you get the fourth one for free. Not only did she insist on going through that bin, she pressured me to do the same. You wouldn’t believe how time-consuming it was to go through a tall bin full of bras that were all mixed together so you might pull out a 38C sized followed by a 28A size followed by a 42DD size and so on. So I eventually found four bras where I could take advantage of the “buy 3 get one free” offer. All of those bras I purchased at the Playtex outlet store that day ended up literally falling apart six months later. That’s pretty pathetic considering the fact that the bras I usually purchase at discount big box retailers like Target and Walmart can last at least five years (if not longer). Let’s just say that I haven’t shopped for any bras at the Playtex outlet store since then. I also gave up on the idea of actually going into downtown Rehoboth Beach with either my ex-husband or any of his family members.
That was then and this is now. Since I was vacationing by myself, I had the option to actually go into downtown Rehoboth Beach and skip all of the outlet stores. So I decided that this year was going to be the year where I finally get to step foot inside of Rehoboth Beach itself.
Once I checked out of the motel I took Coastal Highway north until I hit downtown Rehoboth Beach. I parked close enough to be within a short walking distance of that town’s Boardwalk. I took a couple shots of the beach.
Like the day before, the temperature was in the low 90s with high humidity. The only reason why I didn’t even go into the ocean on that day was because I was due to go home and I didn’t have a place to stay in Rehoboth Beach. I would’ve had to go through the effort of searching through my packed suitcase for my swimsuit, coverup, and beach towel, searching for a place where I could change into my swimsuit/coverup, finding a place to park my stuff on the beach while I went into the ocean, then search for a place where I could take a shower before changing back into my street clothes then walking out to the car to put my beach things away. It really wasn’t worth the effort for just a few hours.
So I decided to focus on the Boardwalk instead. Compared to the one in Ocean City, Rehoboth Beach’s Boardwalk is relatively less crowded and quiet. It’s smaller than Ocean City’s and it seems to be way more laid back and less raucous. (Unlike Ocean City, I didn’t hear any stores play loud music.)
I ate lunch at Grotto Pizza, where I ordered this personal size white pizza that was excellent. The service was excellent as well.
Here are some more shots of Rehoboth Beach’s Boardwalk, including a business with a rainbow flag (which indicates Rehoboth Beach’s longtime reputation of being LGBTQ friendly).
Rehoboth Beach has an amusement park on the Boardwalk known as Funland, which has a variety of different rides.
Like Ocean City, Funland has its own haunted ride that’s known as the Haunted Mansion. The line was long but it moved very fast. I went on that ride and I have to say that it might be better than Ocean City’s Haunted House ride. Maybe it’s because I’ve been on the Haunted House ride numerous times since I was a child and it was the first time I’ve ever ridden the Haunted Mansion ride so everything is new. In any case, I enjoyed it.
When I was a child and teenager I remember that the Boardwalk in Ocean City used to have fortune telling machines that purported to tell you the future. I haven’t seen any of those fortune telling machines on my most recent trip to Ocean City so I was pleasantly surprised when I found one in Rehoboth Beach. This one is known as Zoltar Speaks and he’s basically an animatronic who moves his head and hands when you put money into the machine until a piece of paper comes out with your fortune.
I got a kick out of using a fortune telling machine for old time’s sake.
Like I wrote earlier, Rehoboth Beach has long had a reputation for catering to the LGBTQ crowd and they even have t-shirts especially for them.
Even the stores in a supposedly pro-LGBTQ place like Rehoboth Beach sold Donald Trump t-shirts. At least this particular store sold one anti-Trump shirt (the “Pendejo” one). It also sold a “Fuck Putin” t-shirt with the lettering done in the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag. But the majority of t-shirts I saw were obviously catering to the MAGA Donald Trump-loving crowd.
There were also t-shirts that had nothing to do with either LGBTQ people or politics.
At one point I decided to walk about a block on a side street away from the Boardwalk where I saw all kinds of cool things. I saw this neat dolphin statue.
I also saw this really cool building that housed a British fish and chips place that was called Go Fish! Unfortunately I was still full from lunch and it was too early for dinner so I just took this one photo of the outside. (At this point I began to kick myself for not trying to get a hotel or motel room in Rehoboth Beach so I could stay for one or two nights and I could actually go swimming in the ocean and eat a meal in a place like Go Fish!)
During my time at Rehoboth Beach I made only one purchase. I bought a pastel the-dye souvenir t-shirt at a Sunsations store.
Shortly before I left I noticed some ominous looking clouds were starting to come in. The next picture showed how cloudy the weather became. I saw on my phone app that it was calling for rain again! I decided that it was time for me to leave Rehoboth Beach before the rain started.
I was in a laid-back mood so I decided to just continue taking Coastal Highway north until it became US 113. I continued north until I hit Dover then I took Delaware Route 1 and I arrived at the Christiana Mall. By that point I was hungry so I ate dinner at the Shake Shack. By the time I finished my meal it began to drizzle. Plus it was getting late in the day and I really wanted to be back in Maryland by nightfall.
Unfortunately the rain was a bit heavier but the good news was that it didn’t rain as hard as when I was driving to Ocean City. But I felt very nervous after sunset and I was driving along I-95 in northern Maryland and everything was unfamiliar, the roads were very dark, and, on top of it, I was dealing with very wet streets and tons of drivers who were speeding as if there was no rain at all. I began to wish I hadn’t stayed so long in Rehoboth Beach while a part of me felt glad that I had stayed as long as I could.
I began to relax a little bit when I reached Baltimore and there were plenty of bright lights. My GPS suggested taking the exit on to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway as a quicker way of getting home. I didn’t mind that suggestion because there were so many crazy people driving on I-95, including truckers, that taking the parkway would at least have me avoid the crazy truck drivers who were driving so recklessly in the rain. (The Baltimore-Washington Parkway is restricted to cars, buses, and motorcycles only.)
So I reached the exit only to find that there was construction on that exit. A sign said that the exit would be closed on the following day for renovations. At least I was lucky that I could still use that exit.
Here is where things became harrowing. There were traffic cones and giant steel drums set up along half of the road so the exit ramp was way more narrow than usual. One misstep while driving and it would’ve been total calamity for me. So I was driving very slow in the hopes that I could avoid hitting a cone or steel drum with the sky continuing to rain.
This went on for several minutes until I reached the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful for me. By the time I got home it had mostly stopped raining.
The next day I was unpacking my suitcase when I found something pretty amusing with the deodorant that I had brought with me to the beach. I had the suitcase in the truck and it was hot back there. It caused my deodorant to literally change its shape as these photos show.
The deodorant is still usable. I just have to remember that the stick is narrower than usual.
In any case, that’s a wrap for my 2022 beach vacation. I really enjoyed myself this time despite the frequent appearance of rain. Having the opportunity to go to the beach on a bright sunny day made up for the rainy periods. My only regret was that I underestimated how cool Rehoboth Beach was because it’s one of those places that warrants at least two days in order to appreciate it. Otherwise I felt it was the perfect vacation for me.
I’m thinking that if I were to do this again, I would definitely spend at least one night in Rehoboth Beach so I could have the chance to leisurely enjoy the beach and the ocean. Well, there’s always next year!
Other Posts in My 2022 Beach Vacation Series
My 2022 Trip to the Beach Day One: July 25, 2022
My 2022 Trip to the Beach Day Two: July 26, 2022
My 2022 Trip to the Beach Day Three: July 27, 2022
My 2022 Trip to the Beach Day Four: July 28, 2022
My 2022 Trip to the Beach Day Five: July 29, 2022
If there was a day where I can say that it was a very perfect beach day, my last full day in Ocean City, Maryland was it.
My day began when I decided to drive into the neighboring town of Fenwick Island, Delaware where I could go shopping without paying any state sales tax. (That’s right, Delaware does not charge sales tax on anything.) The first thing I did was to purchase some caramel popcorn at Fisher’s Popcorn.
The next thing I did was to go to a two-story building that I attempted to go to on my last visit to the area last year only to find out that it was closed on Wednesdays. This time I went on a Thursday and it was open.
The lower floor of the two-story building houses Sea Shell City, a store where you can purchase all kinds of sea shells along with assorted souvenirs like t-shirts, toys, and decorative items (such as framed art). The upper floor houses the DiscoverSea Shipwreck Museum, which specializes in items that were retrieved from actual shipwrecks. I haven’t been there since I was married so I was very happy that I got to visit it again.
Unfortunately the only photo I have to show for it is this one featuring two pirates that are situated at the front entrance to the steps that lead to the museum.
That’s because the museum has rules regarding photography and videography. Shooting video is not allowed. Taking pictures is okay as long as they are for your own personal use. You cannot post any photos you shoot online without permission from the museum.
So I ended up just viewing the exhibits. That museum is just as I remembered it when I last visited it in 2011. It’s so fascinating seeing coins, books, and even china that were retrieved from shipwrecks. My personal favorite is the broken china that had coral growing through it, which made it look like a piece of avant-garde sculpture.
After I finished touring the museum upstairs and checking out the store downstairs, I decided to drive back to Maryland. On the way back I briefly stopped at the Fenwick Island Lighthouse, where I took this picture.
On the way back to the motel I decided to stop at the nearby bagel shop, Shmagels Bagels, where I ate a lunch featuring a bagel with cream cheese, a bag of potato chips, and a diet soda.
After lunch I went back to my motel room where I changed into my swimsuit and walked to the nearby beach. It was the perfect weather. The temperature was in the 90s and it was very humid. But getting into the ocean was totally refreshing and I was able to cool off quickly. On top of it I had sunscreen with me so I had the absolute perfect beach experience. Here is what the beach looked like that day.
For the next couple of hours I alternated between getting in the ocean then going back to my beach towel and read a trashy paperback novel that I had brought with me. (I purchased it at Five Below for only $5. It’s one of those novels that is so bad with cliched dialogue that it’s funny.) Towards the end of my stay at the beach I saw some nasty clouds starting to move in so I decided to return to my motel room where I took a shower and changed clothes.
Since it was my last night in Ocean City, I decided to go to OC Wasabi, which is a sushi restaurant that’s located near the motel. As I parked my car and started to walk to the front door it started to rain. At least I had this excellent dinner that was artfully arranged, as you can see in the next photo.
I decided that—rain or no rain—I was going to spend my final night on the Boardwalk. By the time I reached the parking lot it had stopped raining and I saw the remnants of this rainbow that appeared in the sky. Here are the photos I managed to take before it completely disappeared.
The Boardwalk was incredibly crowded that night. The next photo shows a long line of people waiting to get on the Haunted House ride. I got in line after I took that picture. I enjoyed the ride so much that I wanted to ride it again but I saw that the line was nearly twice as long so I decided to drop that idea. (I once shot a video years ago showing how lame the ride was but that ride has definitely improved since it underwent renovations a few years ago. One of these years I’m going to actually film the ride so I could do a comparison “before and after” video of that ride.)
The last time I was on the Boardwalk I didn’t have much energy to do a lot of walking because I had spent the afternoon walking around the Salisbury Zoo. I came up with an idea which enabled me to see more of the Boardwalk. I got on the Boardwalk train where I rode it until it reached The Kite Loft then leisurely walked back until I reached the parking lot where my car was parked. While I was riding it I was treated to a bunch of lovely sunset photos where the clouds turned a variety of very pretty pastel colors.
I finally reached The Kite Loft, which was another store I haven’t been to since 2011. (I didn’t visit that store last year because I had to cut my Boardwalk visit short due to the hurricane remnants that arrived in Ocean City.) As you can guess from the name, The Kite Loft specializes in kites and related products (such as wind socks). Here are a few photos I shot while I was in that store.
As I was walking on the Boardwalk I noticed a Hooters restaurant that wasn’t there the last time I was in that particular part of the Boardwalk back in 2011. Ocean City had long prided itself on having locally-owned mom-and-pop businesses on the Boardwalk and Hooters is a national chain. (I’ve only eaten at Hooters twice and both times I found the food to be not very memorable. I only ate there because I was with guys who wanted to eat there. That’s what happens when the owners focuses more on hiring sexy young women to wear skimpy uniforms so men and boys can ogle them and less on having tasty food that would actually entice people to come back.)
I saw this guy dressed as Batman on the Boardwalk.
There was another store on the Boardwalk that I wanted to visit. Ocean Gallery is an art gallery that has been on the Boardwalk as far back as when I was a child. I remember my parents going there where they purchased two paintings that hung on the living room walls of the house that I grew up in when we lived in Glen Burnie. It was such a fun place with seeing the eclectic outside and the walls literally covered with art. I had looked forward to visiting it again only to find out that it’s no longer open in the evenings, which was a bummer. I don’t know how much the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent Great Resignation had to do with the now-limited hours. It looks like the next time I go to Ocean City I’ll have to go in the daytime. At least I shot some photos of the outside so you can get a general idea of how unique that store is.
For years there have been an artist who makes these giant sand sculptures featuring Christian images. You don’t have to be a Christian to appreciate how amazing these sand sculptures are. This person spends so much time on each sculpture that is destined to eventually melt away by the wind and the rain.
I took a photo of some of the t-shirts that were on sale on the Boardwalk.
Here are a couple of photos of the 9/11 Firefighters Memorial.
Here’s the Esskay Clock. (Esskay was a local Baltimore-area manufacturer of hot dogs and sausages. The face of the clock includes a hot dog graphic. The company has since been taken over by Smithfield Foods and it discontinued the Esskay line. The clock is one of the few Esskay relics that still exists.) When I was a child and my family used to go on vacation with my aunt, uncle, and cousins, we kids were instructed that if we ever get lost while we were on the Boardwalk, we were supposed to wait at the Esskay Clock. I actually got separated from the family once when I was young so I waited by the clock for a few minutes where my mother found me. I remember she praised me for doing what I was instructed to do.
I ended my evening on the Boardwalk with a visit to Dolle’s Candy shop. Dolle’s specializes in making salt water taffy in a variety of flavors, including exotic ones like coconut, peach, and piña colada. I purchased a small bag of taffy in chocolate, vanilla, key lime, lemon, and cinnamon.
The last photos show what I purchased that day. I purchased a the-dye Fenwick Island, Delaware t-shirt from Sunsations that morning.
I also purchased two tiny sea shells from Sea Shell city for only 98 cents each.
They are perfectly scaled for my Disney Nuimos.
Other Posts in My 2022 Beach Vacation Series
My 2022 Trip to the Beach Day One: July 25, 2022
My 2022 Trip to the Beach Day Two: July 26, 2022
My 2022 Trip to the Beach Day Three: July 27, 2022
My 2022 Trip to the Beach Day Four: July 28, 2022
Sagittarius Dolly 
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