One Last "Summer" Getaway

I am never ready for summer to be over. When I broke my foot we had to cancel our little 3 day trip to the beach because I could barely walk and the sand would be much too challenging. Also I didn't want to get my cast any dirtier than necessary during the six weeks that I was going to have to wear it. Since I'm almost done with this ordeal (I hope!) I figured it was time to take the make-up trip.

I don't know why this is, but Doug has a thing for bed and breakfasts. I'm more of a hotel person, but it's pretty cool staying in a really old house like the Merry Sherwood. Supposedly it's even haunted. I was very happy to learn that they were serving breakfast at 8:30 which is a relatively reasonable time. I hate having to drag myself out of bed at an unnaturally early hour to eat an incredibly delicious meal before I'm even awake enough to appreciate it.

It was raining cats and dogs the day we left and the Merry Sherwood was looking pretty gloomy. Our room was also kind of gloomy, but cozy at the same time. We slept under this extremely ornate chunk of wood:

The entire house is completely filled with amazing antiques. The transom and side lights around the front door are pretty unusual.

So we had our delicious fancy breakfast and headed off to Assateague even though the weather didn't look too promising. As it turned out, we got in about three hours of beach time. The sun actually came out. Because there had been a really bad storm there a few weeks ago, all of the soft white sand had been pushed back into the dunes. The black sand that was left was very hard and flat and therefore very easy to walk on. Apparently the sand shifts from the storms every winter and the white sand comes back in the spring. After we had our afternoon at the beach I couldn't resist taking more pictures.

The ponies were nice and clean from the previous day's rain showers.

Bambi and his mom were also looking very fresh.

This is Miss Assateague. Isn't she pretty with her Veronica Lake hairstyle?

Here's a little video of a couple of big ponies and a very frisky little one:

All over the eastern shore the bean fields are beginning to turn yellow.

On the way home we stopped in Berlin at a wine store that is associated with the Atlantic Hotel. Doug bought some marinated anchovies, olives, and a couple of interesting cheeses. We couldn't find any decent bread in Berlin to complete our picnic spread, and it was raining really hard again so we stopped at the Panera in Salisbury, took our food in, bought a loaf of sourdough, and had our picnic inside the Panera. The anchovies were delicious and tasted really fresh - not anything like those awful dried things people sometimes put on pizza.

We got back Saturday in plenty of time for our gigs. On Sunday I played my brunch, did an orchestra rehearsal, and went to the Wayne Shorter concert at UMD. By then I was really far behind in my preparation for school the next day. So I guess that was the last hurrah of summer. I'm ready to accept that it is fall now. But I still might do one last day trip to the beach - I just can't help it!!!