Delaware - Day 28 - Roxana and Fenwick Island

Trap Pond State Park
Monday, 28 January 2019

today's route

I've got a reservation for the dogs to stay 2 more ights at the day care Tuesday-Thursday, so they can get a last doggy fix before we go to another state.  I don't know how long it'll take to find a day care for them in Maryland and want them to get as much play time as possible before then.

That just leaves today to take them somewhere, so I decided to go over to the beach, which I'd gone to before without them.

I passed a hog farm not far down the road from the campground, but I'd never noticed it before.  I don't know where the hogs were hiding when I've gone by before, but they were sure outside today.

I passed orchards right by a street sign for Peach Tree Lane, so I'm guessing those were peach trees.  I can only tell apple trees, and then only by their leaves (not useful this time of year), so don't have any other way of knowing what kind of trees were in the orchards.

I decided to take a route through the small town of Roxana, which got profiled on the early morning TV news because it's where the Little League's Senior League holds the Softball World Series.  That seemed wildly unlikely to me - how could a tiny town have the facilities for something like that - so decided to go take a look.

And I'm now a believer.  They've got a set-up with 9 baseball fields, some of them with pretty big grandstands, and it does indeed look like they could handle a bunch of softball games.

see? real fields

We went on to Fenwick Island, where I’d been before but hadn’t realized the first time that it really is an island. The whole town is crisscrossed with canals and houses built all along them, and to get there you cross a bridge over a very large waterway that isn’t labeled, and I can’t see anything on the map to help me out.

not-good photo of canals

the climb to the beach

nice clean beach

The beach is lovely, though, and the dogs had fun running around and wrestling in the sand.  I keep them on the leash, having no faith at all that they’d come back to me before getting in trouble.  But I’m willing to try to run with them a little, and it helps that the sand was so soft that it slowed them down as much as it did me.  Even going closer to the waterline didn’t produce hard sand, which seemed odd.

Very clean beach, no ocean debris.  Lots of broken crab shells and mussel shells, but that’s nature’s litter, not ours.  Delaware is another state that doesn’t allow vehicles on the beach.  The access points from the city streets were about a block apart all through town and were very steep.

beach houses

the fancy one

Houses all along the beach, of course, some quite new and some obviously old.  But if I owned one of those houses, I think I’d be worried about the fact that the sand dunes are as high as the 2nd story of the houses and only a few yards away.

Walking the dogs I passed one house (see right above) that was so big I figured it must be divided into multiple dwellings but couldn’t figure out how.  I asked a passerby who said no, it actually is a single-family dwelling.  He was guessing drug money or something.  It’s for sale if anyone’s interested.

We took the route back that led through the cypress swamp forest I’d seen before.  There are very large farm fields a ways before it, and they restart immediately on the other side of it.  I passed what looked like a family farm with a sign saying Murray Seed: corn, soybeans, wheat, barley.  So that’s what they’re growing in these fields when it’s not the dead of winter.

I passed a goat farm with lots of little goats – don’t know if they’re young or that’s just their size.

I passed a man walking along the edge of the road with bare feet.  He was wearing a jacket and heavy pants, but his feet were bare.  He didn’t seem uncomfortable, he didn’t try to flag down a ride.  He was just walking along.

I stopped to get gasoline and saw a man inside with a nose at least 3 times bigger than any I’d ever seen before.  Wasn’t it in Cyrano de Bergerac that we got the phrase: “A nose to invite a man to?”  Well, maybe I'm mixing that quote up with something else and, sadly don't have my Bartlett's with me, but this nose fit it perfectly.  The man looked about my age and I’ll bet he’s spent his whole life having people stare at his nose.  I tried to look in his eyes instead, to be polite.