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I spent last week blogging about my July vacation to the beach. (In case you’ve missed my series, you can read Prologue, Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four, Day Five.) I brought my Disney Nuimos with me on my beach trip and I took some photos of them as I traveled to various places. I made a video slideshow that I uploaded on to TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
As for the music I used in the background, it’s the song “It’s a Shore Thing” that was written and performed by my late high school music teacher, Tim Landers. I remember that sometime last year, after I made my previous trip to Ocean City, I decided to do a search on TikTok to see if that song even exists in that platform’s extensive database. To my surprise, TikTok had a one-minute excerpt from that song available for anyone to use in their videos. So I used it as sort of a personal tribute to him. (You can read more about how he influenced my life in this blog post I wrote about him five years ago.) While I can’t say for certain if he would have liked how I used his song, I think he probably would’ve been thrilled to learn that his song is available on the currently hottest social media platform for anyone to use. In any case, here’s the song “It’s a Shore Thing” in its entirety.
If you like “It’s a Shore Thing,” you can either download it or stream it online (depending on the platform in question) from AllMusic, Amazon, Apple Music, Shazam, Spotify, and Qobuz.
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
The weather was cloudy yet was very humid and my phone’s weather app couldn’t decide on whether it was going to rain or not. (Sometimes I would refresh the app saying that it was going to rain in the afternoon and other times I would refresh it and it said that it wasn’t going to rain until the evening.)
But then I had this idea. Years ago my then-husband and I had visited the Ward Museum in Salisbury. It’s a museum that’s dedicated to painted duck decoys and wildlife art in general. I found that museum to be very fascinating and my husband enjoyed it as well. I had always wanted to revisit that museum but my husband was into taking beach trips with members of his own family. I had the idea of using that museum as a backup plan in case it rained on one of the days and, well, let’s say that no one else was interested, including my now ex-husband, who previously said that he enjoyed going to that museum the one time that he and I went together. So I decided to go to that museum for the first time in a number of years. I had forgotten that there is a 40-minute commute between Ocean City and that museum so it was a longer trip than I expected. By the time I reached Salisbury I needed gas and I was hungry. I went to Royal Farms because I love their fried chicken. Most Royal Farms locations tend to be carryout only but this particular location had tables and chairs on the inside so I was able to eat my meal in air conditioned comfort. After lunch I went a few feet to the pumps and got gas and I was on my way again.
I arrived at the Ward Museum only to discovered that it was closed until further notice because the building’s air conditioning system was broken. I was totally bummed by that and I also kicked myself for not calling the museum before I left Ocean City.
I was reluctant to immediately make the 40-minute drive back to Ocean City. I did a few Google searches to see if there was any other places in Salisbury that was worth visiting. After all, it is a college town (home of Salisbury University) so I thought that there had to be more attractions.
There weren’t a lot of places for out-of-town tourists to visit. The best option I saw was the Salisbury Zoo, which is located just a few miles from the Ward Museum and it has free admission. I decided to check it out.
So I arrived at the zoo and I found it small yet quite charming. They had some awesome landscaped gardens.
Of course the zoo has animals, such as these pink flamingos.
The weather alternated between cloudy and sunny while the high heat and high humidity was constant the entire time I was there. I came across an area dedicated to animals from Australia (such as a wallaby) but they were all sleeping when I was there. That gate was pretty cool looking though.
There was one section of the zoo that I couldn’t get to because it was roped off due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The sign in the next photo explained how cats can get COVID-19 and that was why that particular area was closed.
I saw some ducks in enclosures.
They even had a beehive in one of the landscaped gardens.
I saw these large flightless birds walking around. At first I thought they were ostriches or emus but a sign said that these birds are known as the greater rhea and they are native to South America.
I also saw a group of prairie dogs.
And I saw a bald eagle as well.
I spent about an hour and a half at the zoo until the heat got to me (despite taking frequent sitting breaks in the shade) and I left. The Salisbury Zoo is small compared to other zoos I’ve been to (such as the National Zoo in DC) but it’s still pretty nice. It’s definitely for people of all ages and it’s a good alternate attraction if you’re someone who wants to spend a day doing other things besides the beach.
It was late afternoon and I had a 40-minute return trip to Ocean City. I decided to just drive straight to the Boardwalk and walk around that area. The Boardwalk was a bit crowded in the late afternoon but I still decided to stay since I had a seriously truncated visit last year due to the remnants of Hurricane Ida and I just wanted a normal laid-back visit this time.
The shops on the Boardwalk has long been notorious for its tacky t-shirts and it was the case this year, as this next photo shows.
There were a disturbing number of pro-Trump t-shirts available that a MAGA fan of could buy for his wardrobe.
There were a number of anti-Putin/pro-Ukraine t-shirts for sale as well.
I don’t recall seeing this many political t-shirts on the Boardwalk in previous years. It seems like the events of the last few years have inspired the shops to sell more than the usual apolitical raunchy t-shirts (such as the notorious Big Johnson shirts that I used to see many of the stores carry). In a way it seems sad because seeing a Trump t-shirt on sale is the LAST thing I want to see at any beach resort.
I made a couple of videos during my time on the Boardwalk. One was a street musician who played this really cool looking electric violin. He was incredibly talented. I uploaded that video on TikTok, Clapper, Instagram, and YouTube.
The other was this incredibly talented artist who used spraypaint and a variety of stencils to create really cool works of art. I shot a short video showing how he used his art supplies which I uploaded on to TikTok, Clapper, Instagram, and YouTube.
I decided to eat dinner at Tony’s Pizza. The restaurant was crowded so I ordered two slices of cheese pizzas and a diet soda to go.
I sat on a nearby bench where I ate my pizza slices as I watched the beach and the ocean. Here’s a shot I took of the beach.
I had wanted to walk a little further down the Boardwalk but I was became exhausted. Between my earlier trip to the Salisbury Zoo and walking around the Boardwalk, my legs and feet were totally sore. I decided to walk back the way I came. I took a couple of photos of the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Odditorium.
I briefly thought about going inside but my legs and feet had grown so stiff and sore that I decided against it. Instead I went to the parking lot, got in my car, and drove back to the motel. I basically stayed in my room the rest of the evening.
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
I ate breakfast with the cereal, paper bowl, and plastic spoon that I brought with me from home along with milk I bought the day before on the road. (At least I didn’t have to eat out for breakfast.) Given the weather forecast for storms throughout my days in Ocean City, I had to schedule beach time around the weather. So much for spontaneity on this trip. Basically if I wanted any beach time, I had to go in the morning. I tried putting on my 20-year-old pair of swim shoes only to discover that I couldn’t fit them over my feet. Either my feet have gotten bigger or my swim shoes have shrunk. (I’ve had them for over 20 years.) In any case I wore them like clogs when I was walking to the beach.
At least I was actually able to go into the ocean, unlike my last trip. (I didn’t have to contend with remnants from hurricanes this time around.) There was a light breeze, which was a far cry from the hurricane force winds that whipped grains of sand in my face last year.
When I went in the water I felt very cold but then I quickly got used to it. Had it been a very sunny day, it would’ve been perfect. But I was grateful for the clouds because I realized that I forgot to pack sunscreen and my skin tends to burn.
The beach area near my motel was a designated surfer beach so I was able to see people on surfboards.
I left the beach around noon because my weather forecasting app said that it was going to rain soon and I was hungry. After taking a quick shower I decided to go out for lunch. I discovered that the bagel shop that’s located closest to my motel closed around 1 p.m. but another bagel shop was opened a little later so I drove there.
By the time I arrived at Uber Bagels it was starting to rain very lightly. As I enjoyed a garlic bagel with lox spread it started to rain harder. By the time I finished my lunch the place started to close down for the day (it closed at 2 p.m. but I was only allowed to stay long enough to finish my lunch then leave immediately). I stayed in my parked car for a while until the worst of this rainstorm ended. I took this shot of my car’s windshield.
I thought about driving into Delaware but after a mile or two I saw that the street was totally flooded and I was literally driving my car through water. I took a U-turn and decided to head back south. I ended up driving in the middle lane because the right lane was literally flooded. I even saw a car that was stalled in the middle of the right lane with water coming up to the lower part of the door. I managed to take these two pictures of cars driving through flooded side streets on to the main highway while I was stopped at a traffic light.
The good news was that further south on the island the right lanes were less flooded so I managed to slip inside of a Candy Kitchen that gave me serious Willie Wonka vibes, including the fancy colorful plastic furniture and the cute and colorful plushies.
While I was at Candy Kitchen I purchased a couple of small bags of salt water taffy and dark chocolate nonpareils.
The temperature plummeted along with the rain and I realized that I forgot to pack a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans for those occasional cool nights. I stopped at Sunsations to go sweatshirt shopping. While I was there I saw these tacky shot glasses, one of them had the rainbow pride flag.
I ended up buying a cool looking sweatshirt that would be especially useful when the weather gets cooler in a few months. I decided against buying long pants because the sweatshirt had cost close to $30 and the matching long pants were just as expensive. I decided to just wear shorts with my sweatshirt. I also purchased a new pair of swim shoes to replace the over 20-year-old pair that no longer fit my feet.
For my last errand I stopped off at CVS where I purchased a bottle of sunscreen (which I also forgot to pack) and two boxes of tissues.
I returned to the motel room where I took a photo of what I purchased that day.
Here’s a photo of me modeling that sweatshirt.
For dinner I ended up walking to Higgins Crab House (which is located across the street from the motel) while I wore my new sweatshirt.
The restaurant was crowded so I ended ordering a crabcake sandwich and fries as a takeout then brought it back to my room where I ate it. The meal was very good. I had thought about going to the Boardwalk that evening but the weather was too rainy so I ended up spending the evening in my room where I surfed the web and read a book until I fell asleep.
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
When we last left off my trip was nearly canceled at the last minute because the motel attempted to use my debit card to make my reservation and was told that there was a hold on it. Because it was the weekend I wasn’t able to contact the bank until the morning that I was originally scheduled to leave.
So on Monday morning I called the bank and they said that there was no hold on my debit card. I called the motel and told them this so I ended up giving my debit card number over the phone, they ran it through their machine and it came through that time. So I was on for going to Ocean City. I hurriedly ran into the attic to get a suitcase and throw my clothes and other things in it.
I ended up leaving a few hours later than I originally planned. I needed to buy a few things at the local store before I could head on the highway. After I made my purchases I went back in my car where I was straightening a few things on the passenger side of the seat before I started by car. Meanwhile another car had parked next to me. I paid that car no mind because I was focused on myself and my upcoming trip. As I was driving away I saw a man get out and he looked vaguely familiar. I realized that it was, once again, my ex-husband! He was wearing the same dull grey clothes I saw him wear at the farmers market the day before. I was glad to get out of that area without having to say anything to him.
The trip was mostly uneventful until the very end. It started to rain but it was a light rain at first so driving in it was manageable. Then it started to rain harder and I decided to drive slower so my car wouldn’t slip and end up in an accident. (I saw plenty of cars driving fast like it was a perfect weather day.) I tried to endure it because I was already a few hours late for my original plan of arriving at the motel. But then the rain had hit on the windshields so hard that I could barely see anything. I ended up pulling into the parking lot of a Royal Farms store and just waited out this storm surge. It took about 15-20 minutes before that heavy rainstorm passed and it was light rain again.
So I drove onwards. By the time I was on Maryland Route 90 the rain began to fall hard again. I saw plenty of lightning as well. In fact, when I was on that bridge leading into Ocean City I saw a bunch of lightning bolts go off at once. I don’t have any pictures because I was driving and it can be hard to drive and take pictures at the same time.
It was still raining hard when I finally arrived at the Thunderbird Motel. I got my keycard and I saw that my room was on the third floor. What’s more, this motel doesn’t have an elevator and steps were my only option. (The motel is an older building that was built long before the Americans With Disabilities Act became law.) I didn’t notice the elevator issue when I stayed at the same motel last year because my room was on the first floor.
Since it was raining hard I decided to just bring in the things I immediately needed (such as my suitcase and a few boxes of cereal I had brought with me so I could eat breakfast in my motel room instead of eating out). I was struggling with hauling my suitcase up three flights of steps. When I got to the stair landing that was just below the second floor a lovely man offered to carry my suitcase up the steps for me. I told him that I was on the third floor and he said that it was okay because he was on the third floor as well. It was really nice of him to do that for me.
When I got into my room I was literally soaking wet from the heavy rain. But my third floor room is just as nice as the first floor one from last year, as you can see in the next few pictures.
Here’s a photo of the motel sign that I took the following morning.
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
At long last I’m getting around to writing about my summer trip to the beach. Since it expanded to five days and I did a lot, I’m going to write a multi-part series starting with the events leading up to my trip.
Lately I’ve been feeling all sorts of angst. Much of it had sprung from the news. Russia decided to kick off 2022 in a spectacularly bad fashion by invading Ukraine in late February right after the Winter Olympics had ended. There is a growing rise of this horrible right-wing faction in my own country that was based with a toxic combination of Christian nationalism, white supremacy, and unbridled capitalism along the admiration of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and it was all concentrated in the Republican Party. I’m seeing it played out on social media where people are posting all kinds of stuff that has led me to get more stressed out. Even TikTok has been infected with this and it was the place where it had focused on people doing silly dances and showing off their toy collections.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind hearing testimony from people whose lives have been impacted by the recent Supreme Court’s repealing of Roe vs. Wade. But I have seen seeing so many stories of women who needed abortions as a result of rape or incest, women who had ectopic pregnancies who had to travel out of state beecause some states had even banned the procedures for those kinds of pregnancies (never mind the fact that an untreated ectopic pregnancy can kill both the mother and fetus), and similar stories that my mind began to suffer from information overload.
It’s not just abortion I’m hearing about. I’ve heard stories about increased threats against people of color and LGBTQ people and similar stuff. Plus it’s also the midterm elections this year so I’m hearing disturbing stuff about Republican candidates.
Social media had become so toxic and draining that I recently had to set time limits on my smartphone’s social media apps because I would spend too much time scrolling through posts full of doom and gloom when I should’ve been working on more productive stuff (such as my art and tidying up the house). I started doing this a week before my Ocean City trip and my mind began to feel clearer and less stressed after just a few days.
There were other reasons why I felt I needed a vacation. One was I unexpectedly saw my ex-husband for the first time in over a year. I went to a local farmers market and I was looking for parking when I saw a familiar looking man but I wasn’t sure who it was. He had very long curly hair that was dark with streaks of grey hair and his beard also looked long and unkempt. His stomach had such a pronounced bulge that he looked like he was four or five months pregnant. He suddenly turned around and I got a shocking look at his face.
I’m glad I was in the car when I saw him because I don’t know if I could handle reacting to him if we had physically ran into each other. Try to imagine a hermit who has been living in a cave for the past 10 years who was subsisting on an unhealthy diet with very little exercise and you’d get my ex-husband. After I saw him I began to ask myself what had I ever seen in him but then I had to remind myself that he didn’t always look this way. When he was with me he used to take pride in his appearance and personal grooming. It seemed like ever since he left me for one of our friends with a long history of severe mental illness he has let himself gone literally to pot. I don’t even know if the person I fell in love with when we were both college students at the University of Maryland even exists anymore.
For nearly a year I’ve been taking a series of online classes that are offered through Google and Coursera where I would get an IT certificate. I had finally taken and passed the last exam needed in order to finish my last class in the program. There are additional lessons but they are all on how to finding jobs in the IT field along with helpful hints. I know I should be doing those lessons so I would completely finish that class but there was something else that was calling me to return to Ocean City, Maryland.
I realized that I still had free time to do whatever I wanted without having to consider someone else’s work schedule. If I find a traditional 9 to 5 corporate job, my ability to go on vacation would heavily depend on how generous the company would be with leave time. I know there is a trend in people working from home with flexible schedules, which was the result of the Coronavirus pandemic over the past two years.but there are traditionalists who are clamoring for a return to the traditional 9 to 5 workplace where everyone has to be in the office and there’s a chance that I’ll land such a job.
Basically I decided to put off taking the last lessons for a week just so I could do one last vacation before I have to go back to work because I don’t know when I’ll get the opportunity again. I dipped into my savings from my late mother’s life insurance policy to do this. Since I was dipping into savings, I couldn’t afford some lavish vacation so I decided to go back to Ocean City.
Last year I went back to Ocean City for the first time in 10 years. I spent three days there. Day one I traveled there. Day two, which was the only full day I had at the beach, was seriously marred by the arrival of the remnants of Hurricane Ida. I had planned on going swimming that afternoon after driving around the area on a very hot morning only to find the sudden arrival of clouds. I tried to go to the beach but the winds were very strong so I got grains of sand striking my face and the water was too choppy to swim in. I managed to go to the boardwalk but it was seriously truncated due to the high winds. On day three the temperature had dipped so low that it was too chilly to do a quick swim in the ocean before checking out. You can read that saga in full detail (along with pictures) right here.
This year there had been several very hot days with temperatures in the 90s so I was feeling a desire to go back to the beach. I decided to spend five days, from Monday-Friday. I figured that the chances of at least one day where I could go to the beach.and take a dip in the ocean would be higher. But I really couldn’t afford to go for all seven days so I decided to just go on the days when most of the locals would be at work. (I know from past experiences that Ocean City tends to be a bit more crowded on the weekends with a mixture of locals, weekend beachgoers, and people who were staying there for all seven days.)
At this point I’m going to break up this text-only post with a video that was written and performed by my late high school music teacher Tim Landers and his band, The Landers and Heinz Project. It’s called “It’s a Shore Thing” and it’s all about Ocean City. (If you want to learn more about my experiences with having Tim Landers as my teacher, you can read this post that I wrote about him way back in 2017.)
If you like “It’s a Shore Thing,” you can either download it or stream it online (depending on the platform in question) from AllMusic, Amazon, Apple Music, Shazam, Spotify, and Qobuz. Now moving right along to the rest of this blog post…
Just like last year I decided to use Expedia.com to book my trip. I decided to choose the Thunderbird Motel because I stayed there last year and I was impressed with the service and cleanliness and the rates were relatively affordable to me. Everything went without a hitch like last time so I decided to do the booking on a Friday afternoon and I planned on spending the weekend preparing for the trip by doing things like the laundry (I needed clean clothes) and digging up my swimsuit.
I even signed up for EZ Pass. I tried buying an EZ Pass transponder (it’s supposed to be sold through both the MVA and Giant) but to no avail. But I discovered that Maryland has a new program where you can register your car’s license plate and tie it with a credit or debit card and you can travel through the EZ Pass lanes without needing a transponder. I decided to go through with it just so I could avoid the stress of driving through EZ Pass lanes without an EZ Pass. (I found out the hard way that Maryland made all of its toll roads EZ Pass only. Once again, you can read more about it right here.)
But then something happened that made this trip more stressful than it should have been. Part of it was my fault. I got an email from the motel and I didn’t open it right away because I figured that it would be the same email that I got last year where it had the details on when I could check in and whether I needed to wear a facemask before entering the office. The following day I was busy with doing stuff around the house and I had my smartphone on vibration only so I didn’t look at it very much. By the time I checked my email and smartphone (which indicated that I had a voice mail message_ it was late Saturday afternoon. Basically both messages said that there was a hold on my debit card from the bank and I needed to get it squared away if I wanted to keep the booking on my room.
By the time I called the motel the office had closed (it was Saturday night). I called the following day and they confirmed that they couldn’t get my debit card number through and I needed to call the bank. The bank was closed on Sundays so I had to wait until Monday, which was the day I was supposed to leave for Ocean City.
I didn’t do any packing that weekend because I thought that there’s a chance that the trip would fall through and I didn’t want to pack a suitcase for nothing. I still went ahead with doing the laundry because I needed clean clothes no matter where I was going to be.
To be continued in my next blog post.
Other Posts in My 2022 Beach Vacation Series
Prologue
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
The week before last I finished the work in the last class I needed to take before I can get my IT certificate. (For nearly a year I’ve been taking online classes through a program that’s jointly offered by Google and Coursera.) The only thing I needed to do before I can be finally finished is to take the last few online classes that deal with finding jobs in the IT field.
I have delayed taking those classes. That’s because I realized that since I’m still in-between jobs and since I have the money from my late mother’s life insurance policy, I have this unique opportunity to do some traveling. Lately the weather have been very hot and humid (which is typical summer in the Mid-Atlantic Region of the United States) and I began to feel a desire to return to the beach. Late last summer I went to Ocean City for three days where I ended up not swimming at all because I arrived at the same time as the remnants of Hurricane Ida and, well, that was quite an experience that I didn’t expect.
Basically I decided to return to Ocean City while I still have free time because I’m not sure what kind of job I’ll get. If I’m lucky enough to get one of those work from home jobs (which have been proliferating since the arrival of the Coronavirus pandemic back in 2020) then I would at least have some flexible time where I could possible indulge in traveling. But if I end up with a typical 9 to 5 corporate office job with structured leave time, I don’t know when I’ll get the opportunity to go on any vacation in the future. So last week I went back to Ocean City. This time I spent five days there (from Monday to Friday). I couldn’t really afford to spend the whole seven days there so I decided on the weekdays since I know from previous experience that Ocean City tends to be more crowded on the weekends (due to a combination of people just traveling for the weekend and local Eastern Shore residents going to the beach and Boardwalk). There was no hurricane this year so I was able to wade into the ocean. I spent a couple of nights on the Boardwalk. I even managed to spend my last vacation day at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. I took a bunch of pictures and I’ll write more about my trip in a future blog post or two.
This week I washed and put away the clothes that I packed on my trip. I also finished the latest round of postcards that I’ve been writing on behalf of UU the Vote and Reclaim Our Vote. It’s a project that my Unitarian Universalist congregation have taken on where we send postcards to certain districts that are majority BIPOC in an effort to encourage them to vote in the primaries. A couple of months ago we focused on sending postcards to BIPOC people living in Virginia encouraging them to vote. For this latest round of postcards, we focused on sending them to BIPOC people living in Florida. We sent the same postcards as the last time so I didn’t take any new photos this time. Here’s a photo of one of the blank postcards that we are currently using. It has a very colorful design.
It has been two-and-a-half years since the COVID-19 pandemic arrived. So far I’ve managed to dodged the Coronavirus. It’s due to a combination of both luck and following the guidelines set out by both the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control. My last housemate moved out of my home just a week or two before the pandemic arrived and I’ve been living alone since then. During the worst of the pandemic I maintained social distancing whenever I ran into another person and I wore a mask. Even though the mask mandates have been relaxed, I still wear a face mask whenever I go inside of an indoor public place (such as a shopping mall).
When the vaccines came out, I made sure to get vaccinated whenever I can. As of this writing I’ve received two shots and one booster shot. I’m now entitled to getting a second booster shot and I plan on doing so soon because the authorities have said that it’s likely that a new surge will come this fall.
Then on top of the Coronavirus, there’s another virus that’s making its way to the United States. It’s called the monkeypox and it leaves these sores that remind me of chicken pox. I’ve read that if you’ve had the smallpox vaccine then you have a greater chance of avoiding getting monkeypox altogether. I know I had the smallpox vaccine shot back when I was a child. I still have memories of getting a vaccine needle every time I went to the pediatrician for a checkup. I got shots for all kinds of illnesses including whooping cough, polio, and rubella. Like most parents back in the 1960s and 1970s, my parents were firm believers in getting vaccinated so I received a variety of shots. So it’s very likely that I received the smallpox vaccine as a child and I’m probably protected from the newer monkeypox right now.
Speaking of the Coronavirus, I belatedly learned that COVID-19 had touched my extended family. When I was married my husband and I used to visit Arizona each year because his mother had gotten remarried and she decided to move to her second husband’s hometown of Phoenix. My ex-husband’s step-father had four children from his first marriage and they all happened to live in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area. I had always gotten along pretty well with my ex’s step-brothers and step-sisters and their spouses. Their children had accepted us as their aunt and uncle and they loved it when we visited. They thought that we were the cool aunt and uncle who came from the East. (LOL!)
The last time I saw my then-husband’s step-siblings and their families was in January, 2011. It was for my husband’s step-father’s 80th birthday. My mother-in-law had died suddenly the year before and it was the first major family event since her funeral. At the time the oldest of the nieces and nephews had reached their late teens and early 20s. I silently thought about how fast they had grown because I remembered when they were still infants and toddlers like it was yesterday.
It all ended when my husband abruptly walked out on me in late December, 2011 without even telling me that he was unhappy in our marriage. (He left just three months after I had undergone hip surgery and I was still undergoing physical therapy as a result. He also left three days after we spent a lovely Christmas together.) At the time I was Facebook friends with one of my husband’s step-sisters. She was someone whom I got along really well and I’ve always personally liked her. She was among those who reached out to me after he left me. But one day several months later I realized that I hadn’t heard from her in a long time. I went over to her Facebook page and I learned that she had not only unfriended me but she had friended the woman whom my husband left me for (and who married him just two months after our divorce was final).
In addition I hadn’t heard from my ex’s other step-siblings since my marriage ended. At that point I realized that a door had closed on those relationships and they are now in the past. It doesn’t help that I live in Maryland and they live in Arizona so there is that physical distance. I don’t feel financially secure enough to make a long flight to that state and none of them have ever felt the need to travel east so we just stopped communicating. The only reason why I knew that my ex’s step-father had died in 2018 was because one of my ex’s relatives whom I’m still Facebook friends with had made a post announcing his death.
Today I saw a post from one of my ex’s relatives whom I’m still Facebook friends with (and who isn’t among the Arizona relatives) and the same ex’s step-sister who unfriended me on Facebook responded to that post with a message where she got cryptic about how she had been through rough times. I began to get curious so I peeked on her Facebook page. I learned that another step-sister had become a grandmother for the second time with the recent birth of her first granddaughter, who is currently struggling with health problems in the NICU unit of the local hospital. So far it looks like the baby is doing fine and hopefully she’ll recover enough to get discharged from the hospital so she can be home with her parents and older brother (who’s a toddler).
But then I scrolled down where I learned some sadder news. The step-sister’s oldest daughter had passed away from COVID-19 in December, 2020. Learning that had really hit me because I remember when my husband and I met our niece as a baby for the first time the same weekend as the wedding of my mother-in-law and her second husband. Over the years I saw the niece grow into a friendly kid who loved to sing and who also loved Disney movies (especially Lilo & Stitch—I remember when she and her younger sister acted out scenes from that movie during one of our visits to Phoenix). She also had an artistic bent and she showed a lot of potential as an artist and writer. One time I even showed her one of my sketchbooks in an effort to encourage her to continue with her interest in drawing while taking as many art classes as possible.
She went through some tough times as well. I was told by my mother-in-law that she endured frequent teasing from the other kids at school because they thought that she was somehow “inferior” to them. I don’t even know why the kids thought that way about her. I found her to be a sweet, charming, and creative kid.
My niece was among the Arizona relatives whom I saw for the last time in 2011 before my marriage ended. She had just turned 20 and she was trying to decide on a future career path at the time. Now she’s gone at the age of 29 because of the Coronavirus. What was really sad was that shortly before her death, she made a Facebook post announcing that she was soon going to attend an online college in an effort to get an associate’s degree in criminology. Sadly she passed before she had the chance to go back to school (even if it was going to be online only).
I know that I’m only learning about her death over a year-and-a-half later. That’s what happened when her mother decided to unfriend me on Facebook. If I hadn’t come across her response to another in-law’s Facebook post tonight, I still wouldn’t know about my niece being dead.
I went through the last month or two of the niece’s Facebook posts and it seemed like she had grown into a decent woman who seemed to have a liking for pop culture. She still maintain her interest in Disney as an adult. I’m sorry that I hadn’t been present for the last nine years of her life but, judging from her Facebook posts, it looked like she had a happy young adulthood. She still lived in the Phoenix area and, based on her Facebook posts, she remained close to her parents and siblings. It’s really sad that such a sweet woman had to die from such a horrible virus like COVID-19.
I still remember that then-President Donald Trump didn’t even take COVID-19 seriously. He politicized a virus that should never have been politicized in the first place by doing things like ignoring expert advice on how to deal with it. Had Trump decided to take a serious approach to combating the virus, it’s possible that my niece would’ve avoided getting the Coronavirus and she would probably still be alive today. Instead she is now one of the 1.03 million Americans who have died from COVID-19 since it arrived in the United States in March, 2020. It was no wonder that Joe Biden won the 2020 elections—people were fed up with Trump’s handling of this pandemic while more people died.
Ironically I saw that the niece had also made a couple of pro-Trump posts. Luckily those posts were rare so I don’t think she was a MAGA Trump fanatic. (Most of her Facebook posts tended to be more into Disney and some aspects of the gothic/fantasy aesthetic.) But she made enough of those posts for me to conclude that she probably voted for him in the 2020 election. I find it ironic that she voted for a person who didn’t do much of anything to directly confront the pandemic and the Coronavirus had spread so much that it ultimately killed her.
In contrast, when the Ebola virus reached the United States when Barack Obama was in office, he tackled the threat of that virus head-on. As a result, only four Americans contacted Ebola and they all survived.
She died before the COVID-19 vaccine became widely available. I can’t say if she would’ve gotten the shots had she lived just a bit longer. I’d like to believe that she would’ve been vaccinated because I really want to think the best of her.
I’m sad that she wasn’t able to live a full life due to the pandemic. Rest in peace, dear niece.
I almost forgot to mention this video that I created when I wrote my big post about my trip to Ocean City last month and the videos I created during that trip. I did my latest Disney Nuimos-themed parody of various celebrities and social media influencers while I was at the beach. I had Piglet doing a parody of Arielle Charnas, the social media influencer behind the Something Navy blog and clothing line. Here’s the video I did, which I uploaded on to TikTok and YouTube.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Arielle Charnas or could sworn that you have heard her name sometime within the past year, I’ll give you a brief refresher. Arielle Charnas became controversial last year when, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, she announced that she had tested positive for the Coronavirus then she and her family decided to flee their home in New York City for a vacation home in the Hamptons before her mandatory quarantine period had fully ended. She endured a lot of online hate and even death threats for that incident.
Since then she had given birth to her third child and has recently started a new podcast series. The controversy regarding her Hamptons trip has completely died down since there are now vaccines available. These days the Coronavirus-related public outrage is now focused on people who have refused to get vaccinated or even wear a mask only to catch COVID-19 and die.
I devoted my last post to my three-day and two-night trip that included Ocean City and Berlin in Maryland along with Fenwick Island and Dover in Delaware. I packed a few toys on that trip, mainly my 15-inch Ariel the Little Mermaid doll and my Disney Nuimos.
I packed Ariel because the box that she came in said that one can actually take a bath with her and engage in other types of water activity, like a pool. I tried dunking her in the ocean where I had her wait along the shore until a wave rushed over her while I filmed the whole thing. I uploaded the video on TikTok and YouTube.
I did another trip related video featuring both Ariel and the Disney Nuimos. It’s basically a slideshow I shot of the various toys in various places in Ocean City (the beach, the motel room, and the Boardwalk), Fenwick Island (the Fenwick Island Lighthouse and a dolphin-themed wall mural that’s on the side of a Sunsations store) Berlin (the Mermaid Museum), and Dover (the Johnson Victrola Museum). I uploaded that video on TikTok and YouTube.
I’m going to set the tone for this blog post by embedding this music video for a song that’s about Ocean City, Maryland. It’s called “It’s a Shore Thing” and it was written by my late high school guitar teacher, Tim Landers, who was also the lead singer and guitarist on this track.
If you like “It’s a Shore Thing,” you can either download it or stream it online (depending on the platform in question) from AllMusic, Amazon, Apple Music, Shazam, Spotify, and Qobuz. If you’re more interested in learning about the life and music of Tim Landers as well as my days when I was one of his high school guitar pupils, you can read this blog post I wrote back in 2017.
I’ve wanted to make a return trip to Ocean City for the first time since my marriage ended for a long time but I wasn’t able to do it until recently. The first few years were due to tight finances. Last year I received the payout from my late mother’s life insurance policy and I was working on the 2020 Census so I was able to feel financially secure enough to consider making at least a one-day trip. But then the Coronavirus arrived followed by reports that several bars and restaurants in Ocean City were closed due to employees testing positive for COVID-19 and I decided against going there.
This year I got vaccinated and I decided that it was time for me to revive my dream of returning to Ocean City. The main reason why making a return trip was on my mind is because of what happened the last time I was there back in 2011 (which was just five months before my husband literally ran away from home). And my last trip had been under a dark cloud for me. Starting in 2001 my husband and I used to take an annual week-long trip to Ocean City with his sister, her son, and another person. (Some years it was a friend of my nephew while other years it was a friend of my sister-in-law.) This went on until my nephew graduated from high school then joined the Navy. From then on until 2011 it alternated between just the three of us some years and being joined by a friend of my sister-in-law’s other years. My husband especially looked forward to making that trip and he wanted me to come along. Even in 2008, when my hip began to deteriorate so much that I ended up getting a hip replacement that year, my husband was adamant that I went to Ocean City despite the fact that I had a hard time walking around. I really wanted to stay home that year but he pressured me so much that I gave in. I really didn’t enjoy the trip that year because of my hip.
After my hip replacement we continued to make the annual trip and I felt well enough to enjoy that trip. But then early in 2011 I had two falls over a one-week period. The first fall (which happened during a trip to Florida) I managed to recuperate from but it was the second one (where I slipped on a patch of ice during a trip to Annapolis) that had really started to affect my walking. I really didn’t want to go to Ocean City that year because of my health problems but, once again, my husband pressured me into going. By then I had started this blog and I wrote this blog post about how my health problems had affected my ability to enjoy going to the beach. It didn’t help that before I left for the trip the doctor diagnosed me with a bad back. However, that turned out to be a misdiagnosis and after the trip I was initially diagnosed with the fact that the two falls I went through had misaligned my hip replacement by the surgeon who did the original hip replacement back in 2008. That surgeon said that I would need more surgery but, for some reason, he was very reluctant to perform it on me while also saying that I was a big girl. (Yeah, he was an asshole.) So I got a second opinion from a different orthopedic surgeon who agreed with the initial diagnosis and he ended up being the one who did the second hip surgery. I underwent hip revision surgery in late 2011 in order to put my hip replacement back into alignment.
And if all that weren’t enough for that 2011 trip to Ocean City, I ended up with a buildup of excessive ear wax, which wasn’t as bad as my mobility issues but it added to the misery I felt throughout most of this trip. Plus the weather was frequently rainy during that trip. And then there was an unexpected encounter on the Boardwalk from someone who had recognized me from my high school days but I had lied to her about attending that high school because I wasn’t sure who she was and I didn’t want to risk the possibility that she might have been someone whom I never wanted to speak with again.
Then there were the times in the condo when I felt like the third wheel as my husband and his sister cooked these elaborate meals that required lots of prep work, which was the opposite of when I used to go to Ocean City as a child and we basically ate cereal, Pop Tarts, and frozen meals that could be prepared very quickly. While they were preparing these elaborate meals my husband and his sister would reminisce about their childhoods, which I couldn’t get into because I didn’t know them until my early 20’s.
In any case, I really regretted letting my husband pressure me into going to Ocean City that year. It felt like he valued that trip more than my own well-being. I’ve always felt that had I been diagnosed with a terminal illness where the doctors warned my husband against making me travel because it would shorten my lifespan, he would’ve had me go to Ocean City anyway because that annual family vacation was THAT important to him.
So for the past few years I’ve really wanted to go back to Ocean City so I could replace those crappy memories with something better. I was encouraged in making an effort to travel on my own while I attended weekly meetings of the support group for people who are separated or divorced and I was told that traveling alone could really increase my self-esteem while learning how to have fun on my own.
In addition, for years I would see posts from my friends on Facebook about their cool trips to places like Myrtle Beach, the Jersey Shore, Greece, Italy, and so on. I would secretly get envious and jealous of them because they were having the time of their lives going on these carefree trips and for years I was too broke to do anything like that. I had to make do with taking day trips to places like North Beach while returning home by sunset.
Finally I decided to go on that trip to Ocean City. Due to uncertain finances and the ongoing pandemic, staying there for a full week was out of the question but, thanks to the life insurance payment, I could actually afford to stay at least one night in a cheap motel instead of trying to make a day trip out of it. (It would’ve meant getting up between 5-6 a.m., getting out the door between 7-8 a.m., make the four-hour drive to Ocean City, spend the full day there, then leave no later than between 7-8 p.m. in order to return home by a reasonable hour.) I also decided to take a break from my online IT program after finishing my second course on networking because I just didn’t want to deal with taking video lessons and exams while I was at the beach because it would’ve detracted from my enjoyment of this trip.
Basically I waited until I finished with my second IT course (on networking) before I made the arrangements. Due to things like room availability, I wasn’t able to book anything until the last week in August. I decided to make my trip from August 31-September 2. I timed it where I would leave Ocean City the day before the start of the Labor Day weekend because I know that holiday is among the worst times to be in Ocean City due to the increased crowds everywhere, complete with difficulty in finding parking or an uncrowded restaurant to eat a meal. (The other two worst times are Memorial Day weekend and the Fourth of July.) And being in a crowded situation in the middle of a major pandemic would even be a far worse idea than usual.
It would be only the second time in my life I had made hotel arrangements myself. That’s because when I was growing up, my parents used to make all of the arrangements. I got married just 10 months after graduating from college and my husband became the one who made all the arrangements. It wasn’t until 10 years ago that I finally did it myself. It was before my husband abruptly left me. What happened was that my husband had made arrangements to go to Phoenix to go through some more of his deceased mother’s things because his step-father (who has also since passed away himself) decided to move to a retirement community. I would stay behind due to my bad left hip. But then Hurricane Irene abruptly showed up and it was heading towards our area. I really wanted my husband to postpone the trip because I didn’t want to face a hurricane with a bad hip by myself but he refused and flew out to Phoenix just before Hurricane Irene arrived. So I was home alone when the power outage happened. I decided to spend the night in a local hotel that still had power because I didn’t want to spend the night by myself in a darkened home with a bad left hip. My night at the hotel went pretty smoothly as I booked my stay there using the wi-fi from a nearby Wegmans (which still had power). The power was restored at my home by the next day so I was able to return. The worst of Hurricane Irene was over by the time my husband returned from Phoenix.
This time I booked a motel through Expedia, where I got a bargain at around $50 per night so I booked a two-night stay. The big irony is that I booked a room on my own around the same time as another hurricane decided to show up.
Basically Hurricane Ida had showed up to wreck havoc on Louisiana and Mississippi just a couple of days before my trip. I didn’t pay it any mind since I was in Maryland. I was just looking forward to a nice laid-back trip. So here’s a rundown of what I did on my first multi-day trip by myself since my divorce.
Day 1-August 31, 2021
I spent the last few days trying to prepare for everything. The biggest change on this trip is that, for the first time in my life, I had to pack face masks along with my clothes and swimsuit. That’s the cost of traveling during a major pandemic. I received an email from the motel after I booked a room saying that I would need to wear a mask when I went to the office to check in and check out. And I know that there will be other indoor places where wearing masks is required so it made sense to pack masks.
Then I learned that taking Route 50 to the Bay Bridge had totally changed since my last trip to the Eastern Shore 10 years earlier. The bridge now only accepts the EZ Pass transponder instead of cash like before. I once had an EZ Pass when I was married but my husband took custody of that one as part of the divorce settlement. The EZ Pass Maryland website mentioned that Giant carried the transponders but when I went to the Giant located near me, I was told that they hadn’t received any new EZ Pass transponders in over six months.
I could’ve gone to the MVA in Beltsville but I got diverted with taking my online classes and I didn’t purchase one in time for the trip. I learned on this website of an alternate way of getting to Ocean City without taking the Bay Bridge. It involved taking I-95 until you reach the Christiana Mall in Delaware then take Delaware Route 1 South until Dover then get on US 113 South until you reach the Eastern Shore. I thought I would take that route instead. I knew from a previous one-day trip to Hershey back in 2013 that there are some stretches of I-95 North that are toll roads so I packed a small bag full of coins that I would dole out as I reached the toll booths.
After I ate breakfast at home I hit the road. As I traveled on I-95 North I realized to my horror that all of the toll booths in Maryland are now EZ Pass only. I had no transponder on me so I had no other choice but to go through those EZ Pass gates. It’s only a matter of time until the MVA tracks me down and I’ll probably have to pay a fine.
I ate lunch at one of those fast food places in Maryland House, which is one of those giant travel plazas located in Aberdeen then I went back on I-95 North where I had to endure going through a couple of more EZ Pass gates without a transponder.
It wasn’t until I reached Delaware that I had a choice of either the EZ Pass lane or the traditional toll booth. I chose the toll booth at each of the Delaware toll roads and I felt relieved that I could at least pay those tolls.
So I went through Dover and took US 113 South until I hit the town of Berlin, Maryland, whose greatest claim to fame is that the 1999 Richard Geere-Julia Roberts movie Runaway Bride was filmed on location there. I had heard about a new museum that had recently opened known as the Mermaid Museum and I hoped to visit it while I was there. Unfortunately I had arrived late enough that the museum had closed for the day. In fact, a lot of the local shops tend not to stay open after 5 or 6 p.m. I found Berlin to be such a charming town that’s full of art so I took a couple of quick photographs before I decided to head on to Ocean City.
So I headed on to Ocean City where I stayed at the Thunderbird Beach Motel. I found it to be a nice motel for the price. I wanted a basic room without the extra fancy trimmings of a 4-star hotel but still relatively clean and I got it. I would definitely stay there again.
This motel had all the basic amenities, including free wifi, a TV with basic cable, a safe where I could lock my valuables, a small refrigerator, and even a microwave oven. I was so thrilled by the refrigerator that the first thing I did was to go to a local grocery store where I purchased a box of Cocoa Puffs cereal and a small quart of milk. Even though both were expensive compared to what I could find back home, they were still cheaper and much quicker to prepare and consume than eating breakfast at restaurants so I was able to eat in my motel room in the morning.
The most charming thing about my motel room was this tile in the bathroom that had a single tile depicting a fish in the middle.
Once I settled in my motel room I went to the nearby OC Wasabi restaurant where I had a sushi dinner. I loved the fact that it was so artfully arranged, complete with a flower. (The food was also excellent.)
After dinner I returned to the motel room where I did some web surfing and read a library book that I brought with me until I went to sleep. I thought it was important for me to rest up from a long day of driving since tomorrow I had planned an extended beach and boardwalk day and I wanted to be well-rested for that.
Day 2-September 1, 2021
My original vacation plan for that day was to eat breakfast in my motel room with the cereal and milk that I purchased the day before, go on a morning walk along the beach in my street clothes where I would dip my feet into the ocean, then eat lunch, followed by going on an early afternoon driving tour followed by going back to the beach in my swimsuit where I would do a full body immersion into the ocean. After that I would take a shower, dress back into my street clothes, eat dinner at a nearby restaurant, then spend the evening on the Boardwalk. It was a great plan. The only thing was that I didn’t include any kind of contingency plans for dealing potential monkey wrenches that would interfere with that vacation plan, such as the arrival of the remnants of a major hurricane.
So breakfast went off okay. Afterwards I took the walk along the beach. The weather was very sunny and it was already hot and humid. It was also incredibly windy, which was annoying at times, but still manageable. I felt this incredible joy at being able to dip my toes into the ocean at long last and I felt thrilled. I also took a few beach shots that morning, which showed how the day started off very lovely.
I had packed my 15-inch Ariel the Little Mermaid doll mainly because the package she came in indicated that one could take a bath with that doll. (You can even see the original package that indicated that she could be plunged in water in this video I shot when I originally purchased that doll.) I thought it would be a bit wacky to plunge that doll into the ocean while filming it for a short video. I ended up just placing the doll along the edge of the shore and let the ocean waves roll over her while I shot the video. Then I ran quickly to scoop up the doll before the next wave arrived because I didn’t want to risk having the doll swept out to sea. Once I finished with making the video, I dipped my feet into the ocean a few more times before I decided to return to the motel room where I quickly edited that video and uploaded it on to TikTok and YouTube.
For lunch I went to Shmagels Bagels, which was located in the same shopping center as OC Wasabi (where I ate dinner the night before). I had a bagel with cream cheese, a bag of chips, and a diet soda. The bagel place didn’t offer indoor seating due to the pandemic but it had a couple of tables outside where I was able to eat lunch and soak up some sunshine.
After lunch I wanted to take a digestion break before going back to the beach. I decided to use that time to take a driving trip around the island. I traveled north on Coastal Highway until I crossed the state line into Fenwick Island, Delaware. I went to Fisher’s Popcorn, where I treated myself to a bucket of caramel popcorn without having to pay sales tax. (That’s the main allure of shopping in Delaware.)
I originally thought about going to Sea Shell City where I would browse whatever that shop had for sale and I would go to the upper level where the DiscoverSea Shipwreck Museum is located. I always went to that place at least once on previous trips so I thought it would be good to revisit it for old time’s sake. Except I arrived and I discovered that the entire place was now closed on Wednesdays, which was a bummer. I don’t ever recall that place being closed at all during the summer season but now that is the case.
As a consolation I stopped at a nearby Sunsations where I purchased a souvenir t-shirt for myself.
I decided to return back to Maryland. On the way back I stopped off at one of the many lighthouses that dot the Delaware shoreline where I took these pictures.
By that point the direct sunlight along with the constant wind, the high heat, and the high humidity was getting to me. I decided to go back to the motel and rest for about a half an hour then get dressed in my swimsuit and head down to the beach. When I went inside of my motel room it was still sunny outside and it looked like a great day for swimming. I had the curtains drawn while I was in my motel room for privacy reasons so naturally I assumed that the weather would remain the same. After I rested for a little while I changed into my swimsuit and coverup, grabbed my beach bag, chair, and towel and stepped outside of my room.
I soon became shocked at what I saw. These intense grey storm clouds suddenly came and it was even windier than before. In any other situation, I would just go back inside of my room and cancel the idea of going on the beach. However I only had one day in Ocean City and I really wanted to experience the beach as much as possible. I began to hope that these clouds would just be fleeting and the sun would come back. So I continued on to the beach. On the way there I saw this sign urging people to practice social distancing, which was yet another reminder that we were still in a major pandemic.
When I arrived at the beach, I saw how bad the situation was. Many people were starting to leave and I saw no one swimming in the ocean. I also saw the waves getting way rougher, as this next picture shows.
The wind was blowing even harder than before. In fact, the wind was kicking up so hard that it was starting to blow up sand. Grains of sand was hitting my skin so hard that they literally stung. I tried reading my book along the beach but the wind and stinging sand made it impossible. When I got up from my chair, the wind had knocked it down. I also noticed that the seagulls weren’t flying at all. They basically stayed on the beach. In fact, there was one seagull that was very close to me.
I took that chair being knocked over as a sign that I should just give up on doing any kind of swimming in the ocean on that day (or any other kind of beach-related activity for that matter) and just return to my motel room. The first thing I did was take a shower. Afterwards I decided to eat an early dinner then go out to the Boardwalk since that was another thing I wanted to do while I was in Ocean City. I saw that there was a crab place called Higgins Crab House located across the street from the motel. I decided to give that place a try so I walked over.
I ordered the soft-shell crab sandwich with french fries and a diet soda. I found the whole meal delicious and the service was excellent as well.
After dinner I walked back across the street, got in my car, and decided to head towards the Boardwalk. The wind was so high that it was blowing my hair around to the point where I was totally annoyed. I decided to stop at CVS and buy a pack of scrunchies so I could tie my hair back. I managed to tie my hair back but the wind was still determined to blow my tied up hair around while I was still on the Boardwalk. At least it was better than not having my hair tied back at all.
So I parked at the Boardwalk and started my walk at the inlet, where I took this sunset photo. The giant wave on the left side of the photo is the only indication of how bad the weather had become.
The only ride I went on that night was the Haunted House ride. It was running that night because most of the ride is indoors so it wasn’t affected by the high wind. The last time I rode it was back in 2009. At that time I felt that the ride was a pale reflection of my earlier memories of going on that same ride as a child. I shot a video titled Lame Haunted House Ride on the Boardwalk in Ocean City, Maryland and uploaded on to YouTube. It had gotten a lot of views over the past 12 years along with a lot of comments, some of which are hostile. I still stand by my assertion that it was a lame ride when I last rode it in 2009.
Anyway, I saw this sign that said that the ride was refurbished in 2012. I decided to ride it again partly for old time’s sake and partly to see if the ride was still lame or if it had improved.
Having gone on the ride I have to say that it has improved a lot since my last ride in 2009. They added some really cool effects, including ones that looked like ghosts were about to approach you. I really enjoyed that ride. I didn’t shoot any video because I just wanted to see for myself what the ride was like and I just wanted to enjoy myself. I could have ridden it again a second time just to shoot video but I really wasn’t in the mood that night. Having the high wind constantly whip around me had put a damper on my mood. If I ever make it back out to Ocean City again, I will shoot a new video showing how improved this ride had become.
I was determined to enjoy the Boardwalk despite the weather-related obstacles. I noticed that the Boardwalk Train that usually carried passengers up and down the Boardwalk wasn’t running at all that night. I suspected that the wind had a lot to do with that. As I walked I noticed that there were far fewer people than there would be on a late summer evening.
I stopped in a few stores and I purchased a couple of Ocean City souvenir face masks at one of them. I also stopped at Dumser’s Dairyland where I purchased a soft vanilla ice cream cone with a chocolate dip top. I sat on a bench and ate my ice cream as the wind was whipping around me.
After I finished my ice cream cone I decided that I needed a break from the constant heavy wind whipping around me so I decided to ditch inside of the indoor part of the Trimpers Amusements amusement park. The only rides that were operating that night were the indoor rides (such as the aforementioned Haunted House). These rides were mainly kiddie rides along with warped mirrors and trashcans like this clown one in the next photo.
I sat on a bench while I was recuperating from outdoors. I also took a look at the carousel, which is the same carousel that I used to ride on as a child (when my family used to take vacations in Ocean City). As an adult I can appreciate the artistry of the carousel, which not only has horses but also different type of animals like a giraffe and a sea monster.
I decided to go to one of the video arcades. In the past I would spend quarters playing the various video games, some of which were the vintage video games from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s (such as Space Invaders and Donkey Kong). But I saw that the arcades on the Boardwalk have changed. They decided to emulate the newer arcades like Dave & Busters and The Main Event by now requiring people to get a plastic card where you’d load it with cash then use it to swipe the machines in order to play the game. I didn’t think that it made sense for me to get a plastic card just to play a few games since I was leaving Ocean City the following day and I’m not going to be able to return there too often. Here is one of the machines where one can get the plastic card.
Most of the stores and restaurants on the Boardwalk were open despite the weather although there were a few places that were closed down, such as these two fast food places.
All of the outdoor amusement park rides weren’t running due to the intense wind. But they still kept the lights on despite that.
A lot of stores were starting to close down around 9 p.m. I was getting so tired of having the wind whip around me that I decided to go back to the motel. My decision was further solidified when it started to drizzle. I arrived at my car and proceeded to drive back to the motel. At that point, the heavens opened up and it began to rain really hard. I drove my car very slowly in order to avoid any accidents and fortunately most of the other cars on the same road were also driving slow as well. I was so glad that I had a relatively short commute because that rain was intense. By the time I reached the motel, the heavy storm had slowed down to a drizzle once again. I was so glad to reach my motel room.
Here are a couple of photos of the stuff that I purchased that day, including a tub of Fisher’s Popcorn, a the-dye souvenir Ocean City t-shirt, two souvenir Ocean City face masks, and a pack of scrunchies.
I wound down from the crazy weather by surfing the Internet. I learned that the crazy weather in Ocean City was caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida that struck the Gulf Coast states a few days earlier. So I was frolicking around Ocean City in the middle of a hurricane remnant. But I have to admit that Ocean City was pretty much unscathed despite the high wind and the bouts of rain. I later learned that Annapolis and Edgewater bore the brunt of Hurricane Ida as a tornado struck the area. Here’s a tweet from Governor Larry Hogan as he checked out the area on the following day.
As the remnants of Hurricane Ida went north, there was even more damage. Here is what happened to Philadelphia.
Here is how the remnants of Hurricane Ida impacted New Jersey.
New York also suffered heavy damage from Hurricane Ida.
Those reports of what happened in other parts of the Mid-Atlantic Region really made me pause and think that I was relatively lucky that day. Had one of the more damaging remnants of Hurricane Ida hit Ocean City, I’m sure I would’ve seen flooding and other kinds of life-threatening situations. I was so lucky that Ocean City was unscathed. The Wikipedia has listed Hurricane Ida as being the second most-damaging and intense hurricane to make landfall in Louisiana and the sixth-costliest cyclone on record.
Day 3-September 2, 2021
I admit that I was disappointed that I couldn’t do a full swim yesterday due to Hurricane Ida. I had thought about making up for it by doing another walk along the beach in my full clothes while I dip my toes into the ocean just like I did on the morning before. I ate breakfast inside of the hotel room then I started to pack thinking that I would make my walk once I loaded everything in the car and formally check out of the motel.
But when I stepped outside to load my things into the car I saw that the weather had dramatically changed. The weather was very sunny but the temperature was much cooler and the humidity was also way lower than the last few days. The temperature had gone no higher than 73 degrees Fahrenheit. It was a lovely day to be outdoors but it felt way too cold to be doing any kind of barefoot walking along the shoreline. I decided to just give up on doing any kind of ocean plunges on this trip and get out of Ocean City.
Since it was such a lovely day I thought it would be a cool idea to eat an al fresco lunch outside somewhere. I decided to stop at Shmagels Bagels once again and get a bagel with cream cheese, a bag of chips, and a bottle of diet soda to go.
Once I got the food I drove the car along Philadelphia Avenue then I crossed the Route 50 bridge to West Ocean City. The first thing I did was stop at Candy Kitchen, which has a big store in West Ocean City. It is also dotted with some candy-themed sculptures outside.
As you can guess by the name, Candy Kitchen is full of candy. (I purchased a bag of chocolate licorice, a bag of dark chocolate nonpareils, and a bag of pretzels covered in dark chocolate.) Candy Kitchen was also loaded with all kinds of stuffed animals, especially the currently popular Squishmallows.
Candy Kitchen also carried Squishmallow-like plushes made by other manufacturers, which was how I learned that Ty, the company responsible for the 1990s Beanie Babies craze, have its own line known as Squish-A-Boos.
Candy Kitchen was located near the White Marlin Mall, which I briefly stopped at but it was mostly the same chain stores that I could find back home. It even had a Five Below, which I actually went inside but I didn’t stay long because it sold pretty much the same stuff as the Five Below stores located close to my house.
I decided to drive back to Berlin just so I could visit the Mermaid Museum, which was closed when I previously went there just two days earlier. This time the museum was open so I was able to visit.
The Mermaid Museum opened last year and it bills itself as the first museum dedicated to mermaids. Unfortunately I don’t have too many pictures mainly because I saw a sign saying that photography and videography was prohibited with the exception of two designated selfie areas. The museum takes up just one large room and I was able to go through it in an hour. There is plenty of mermaid art including a few sculptures, drawings, and paintings. They had one of P.T. Barnum’s notorious Fiji Mermaids (which is really the upper half of a monkey sewn on to a fish tail). They had one wall that listed mermaids as they appeared in various cultures (such as ancient Greece, Haiti, Africa, and Asia) along with books (such as Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid) and movies (such as Disney’s adaption of The Little Mermaid). Another wall listed people who claimed to have actually seen mermaids. They had smaller display cases with a few mermaid-related items, such as a photo of actress Darryl Hannah when she famously portrayed Madison the mermaid in the film Splash and it was autographed by Hannah herself.
There was even a movie screen that showed two mermaid-themed shorts on a constant rotating basis. Both of those shorts can be found on YouTube in case you’re interested. One is the 1904 film La Sirène made by the early French director Georges Méliès.
The other is a vintage 1961 promotional film for the mermaids at the Weeki Wachee Springs in Florida.
One of the designated selfie areas had a bathtub that one could crawl into in an effort to recreate Darryl Hannah’s famous bathtub scene in Splash. I decided not to try going in because I was feeling a bit on the stiff side after doing a lot of walking along the Boardwalk the night before. But it was a cool selfie staging area that would make a great Instagram post.
The other designated selfie area was larger and it was located near the front entrance. It featured a wall that invited visitors to draw a mermaid.
Even though there were provided art supplies that people could use, I ended up not drawing anything because that wall was so completely filled with drawings that I had a hard time finding an empty space.
That designated selfie area had a small altar made from seashells and a starfish with a sign inviting people to place their hands over it to receive a “mermaid’s blessing.”
When I placed my hand over it, I got a puff of water. I thought it was quite cute!
The Mermaid Museum had a tiny gift shop located just outside of the front door of the museum. They had mostly t-shirts and postcards although I did purchase this hardcover book because I fell in love with it. It’s called The Mermaid Handbook, which is written by Carolyn Turgeon, and it features a mix of mermaid literature, mermaid-themed recipes, and mermaid craft projects. I’m currently reading it now and, so far, I’m enjoying it.
After my visit with the Mermaid Museum I stepped back outside where I saw a couple of wooden adirondack chairs. I decided to eat my bag lunch from Schmagels Bagels there while I enjoyed the lovely weather. After lunch I briefly walked around the downtown Berlin area and even stopped in a few stores before I decided to head out of town.
I took US 113 North into Delaware then I merged on to Delaware Route 1. I headed to Dover where I visited this really neat little museum called the Johnson Victrola Museum.
Eldridge Reeves Johnson was a Delaware native who co-founded the Victor Talking Machine Company and was instrumental in popularizing the Victrola (which was an early record player). That museum had plenty of Victrolas on display.
The museum also had stuff related to the famous dog Nipper. He was originally a mascot of the Victor Talking Machine Company in the United States until that company was sold to RCA and RCA subsequently adopted Nipper as its own mascot.
I was given a guided tour by a young man who demonstrated one of the Victrolas. I also learned that the phrase “put a sock in it” originated with the fact that if one wanted to lower the volume of a Victrola, the only way to do it was to place a rolled-up sock into the horn, which muffled the sound. That’s a pretty cool piece of trivia that I can drop at a future party. (LOL!)
The upper level of the museum had later Victrolas that were redesigned as pieces of decorative furniture. The tour guide told me that the company felt that making the Victrolas that way would entice more women to consider buying Victrolas. (Apparently men were more likely to purchase a Victrola than women.) The company even offered Victrolas in cabinets that could be customized and painted to what the buyer wanted. These one-of-a-kind Victrolas were far more expensive than the mass-produced models.
As I was doing some research for this blog post, I found that the Library of Congress has digitized many of the records that were released by the Victor Talking Machine Company through its Victor Records subsidiary and one can listen to them online for free at the National Jukebox website.
After my visit to the museum I decided to hit the road again. I traveled north until I reached Newark where I decided to stop at the massive Christiana Mall. This particular mall is located close to the Maryland border and the big allure of this mall is the opportunity to do some sales tax-free shopping. The only thing is that if you’re expecting locally-owned stores, you’ll be disappointed. All of the stores in that mall are chain stores, such as Spencers Gifts, Target, Nordstrom, JC Penney, Pottery Barn, Lolli & Pops, and H&M. I walked around hoping to find a place where I could eat dinner but I found the food court to be very lacking.
So I got back in my car and drove to the Christiana Fashion Center, which is a giant open-air shopping center that’s located across from Christiana Mall. That shopping center had more chain stores, such as Trader Joe’s, Best Buy, REI, Ultra Beauty, and Famous Footwear. I ended up eating at the Shake Shack.
My take on both the Christiana Mall and the Christiana Fashion Center is that both places have many of the same chain stores and restaurants as elsewhere. The only real appeal is the chance to go shopping without paying sales tax. But, to be honest, unless you are planning to spend a huge amount of money in one day (at least $500 or more), I don’t think it’s really worth the effort to make the two-hour drive from the DC area. The gas and tolls would erase whatever money you saved on not paying sales tax unless you end up buying a huge amount of stuff.
While I was at the Shake Shack I went into Google Maps on my smartphone in order to figure out a way of going back home while avoiding toll booths because I just didn’t want a repeat of driving through EZ Pass lanes without a transponder once I was back in Maryland. Basically it involved taking the direct exit from the mall on to I-95 South then getting on the Baltimore Beltway and, finally, going on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. It added an extra half-an-hour on the trip but at least I didn’t have to deal with gritting my teeth as I drove through an EZ Pass gate without a transponder.
So I arrived home at around 8 p.m. where I felt tired but happy because I finally made it back to Ocean City. I wished that Hurricane Ida hadn’t showed up but, otherwise, I was content with my trip and I arrived just in time for the start of the Labor Day holiday weekend.
UPDATE (December 14, 2021): As I wrote earlier in this post, I ended up going through a few EZ Pass gates in Maryland despite not having a transponder. I didn’t get a notice from the State of Maryland until just a couple of weeks ago when the envelope finally arrived. Today I managed to pay the tolls online, which turned out to be a total of $18. I’m definitely going to get an EZ Pass transponder for any future trips since EZ Pass seems to be the wave of the future.
Sagittarius Dolly 
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