I was awakened by the dogs just before sunrise on the longest day of the year, and the first day of summer, so I grabbed my camera and headed to the water’s edge with the dogs pulling me on their leash.
Tom’s River Camp is on the southeastern tip of Chincoteague Island on an estuary overlooking Assateague Island and its lighthouse. It was a beautiful morning to shoot photos, calm, great lighting, and hardly a soul awake at this hour. Fishing docks jut out into the water and at this hour I let the dog run free on them. They were tentative at first, but within a minute, they were old salts running up and down the pier.
We were on a timetable this morning, because we had a ferry to catch at Lewes, Delaware that would take us to Cape May, New Jersey. When I booked our passage, the notice said we needed to be there 30 minutes before departure to check in.
Driving out of Chincoteague, I once again came upon the NASA facility that I saw when I drove in. I knew nothing about the NASA Wallops Facility, so I had to check it out on the Internet.
In 1945, NASA's predecessor agency, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), established a rocket launch site on Wallops Island well before Florida’s Cape Canaveral. This site was designated the Pilotless Aircraft Research Station and conducted high-speed aerodynamic research to supplement wind tunnel and laboratory investigations into the problems of flight. Between 1959 and 1961, Project Mercury capsules were tested at Wallops in support of NASA's manned space flight program before astronauts were launched from the Cape. Two rhesus monkeys, Sam and Miss Sam, were sent aloft as pioneers for astronauts; both were recovered safely. In 1974, the name was changed to Wallops Flight Facility and in 1981, it became part of Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
If I didn’t have that ferry to catch, I would have liked to stop at its visitor center to check it out. Another thing I’ll have to leave for another time.
We left Virginia and drove through a portion of Maryland. I’d say it was a small portion, but Maryland is a small state. And then we drove through a portion of Delaware, an even smaller state to get the ferry terminal at Lewes.
We got here with 12 minutes to spare on our 30 minute arrival window. Just enough time to duck into the modern visitor center and buy a T-shirt to prove I was here. As I was paying for the T-shirt, the announcement came that all drivers and passengers needed to be in their vehicles because the ferry was preparing to load.
Within a few minutes we were in an orderly procession driving into the bowels of the ferry, guided by deckhands to make sure we were as close to the wall and the trailer in front of us as possible. We were one of four or five trailers that would be making this sea journey.
The trip across the Delaware Bay to Cape May, New Jersey takes 70 minutes and cost $80 for the trailer, one driver, and one passenger. The dogs ride free, and were allowed to go on deck, or anywhere on the ship, except for the food areas.
Once we were parked we walked up the flight of stairs to get to the deck. The dogs had never been on a ferry, much less any boat before, but they were troopers. Once the ferry got up to speed, they loved having the wind blow through their fur. Several other people took their dogs on deck. And in very short order, Molly and Coco quickly became old sea dogs!
The hour and ten minutes went by very quickly and before we knew it, we disembarked in New Jersey.
When I checked campsites in and around Cape May a day or so ago, they were all a bit pricey so I kept looking until I found one called Cold Spring. When I checked it out on the Internet, it claimed to be a quaint old campground, dedicated mostly to seasonal campers, but with a few sites available for overnighters.
I called the number listed and was told, sure come on in, sites were available for only $31. Best of all it was on the opposite side of the canal near the site of the ferry terminal.
We drove the short distance to cross a bridge to get there, and once we got to the entrance of the park, we almost missed it because the sign was largely overgrown with bushes. And the entrance was extremely narrow, we had to avoid that sign and smash those bushes while turning down the one lane path in an attempt to find the office.
After a couple of hundred yards we came upon a house, but there was no indication that this was an office and there was no one home. Across from the house was the trailer from Desi and Lucy’s movie, “The Long, Long Trailer”. This was starting to look eerier and eerier.
I found an elderly resident of the park inside the screen porch of his permanently planted travel trailer, and he informed me that the office was another couple of hundred yards down the overgrown path. I was leery of driving down this path with the truck and trailer for fear that I wouldn’t find a place to turn around, so I moved the trailer over as far to the side of the lane as I could and headed down the path to see what I could find.
I found the office but there wasno one was around. Taped to the door was a note that said Mr. Mueller should take the campsite called “walnut”. A walked a bit more, found the site, and determined that after some finagling I could fit my trailer into the little site. I returned to the truck and pulled the trailer further into the woods and with Marianne’s able assistance was able to back into the site.
The campground was extremely secluded to say the very least, most of the trailers stood empty waiting with rotted tires for their weekend residents. There may have been one other trailer that wasn’t permanent in the entire park. But we did have water, electricity, and sewer, and our antenna pulled in more than enough TV channels.
I had been to Cape May in 1998 when I was working for AESA, based out of San Diego. This outfit hired computer nerds like me to teach employees of Bell Atlantic an entry level computer technician course, since they were going to be laid off soon and this was part of the transition process. I flew into Newark four times, two of those times to teach in the little town of Mamora which is just a few miles north of Cape May.
On a day that I had off, I drove my rental car to Cape May to see the cute downtown shopping area, the Victorian mansions overlooking the Atlantic, and its marquee lighthouse. I didn’t spend much time in the shopping district but vowed that one day I’d bring Marianne here to see it.
That one day became today.
We drove the short distance into Cape May, saw the folks on the beach with their umbrellas, saw the large Victorian style homes and hotels, and then went to the city center shopping district where cars are banned. Marianne had a grand time checking out many of the stores, and we even bought some gifts! We also found an Italian gelato store, so we just had to have a lemon ice!
Hermit crabs are also a popular item in the novelty stores. If you buy the cage, accoutrements, and food, you’ll get your crab for free. I noticed that about 100 of these crabs together in their “for sale cages” stink. And then I wonder how long these little guys last once they’re brought home and forgotten.
With the sun waning on this summer solstice day, we headed back to the trailer (hoping we could find the place again), had dinner, watched some TV and called it a night.
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