Chincoteague

This weekend we took a quick overnight vacation to Chincoteague and Assateague Islands on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. We had an exhausting, great, great, time. This was the weekend before the annual running of the ponies, so it was kind of the calm before the storm and a good time for us to explore.

We started out visiting the Blueberry Festival, which had some blueberry-related food, but was mostly an artsy-craftsy fair. An old co-worker of mine has a little business selling cleaning cloths, and he had told me he would be working this Festival so we stopped by to see him. He sent us away with some samples and they really do work as advertised, so I'll put a plug in here for his company.

It was still too early to check in to our motel, so we went on a little geocache adventure that took us to a playground right on the water. We didn't find the geocache, but Jake had fun on the slides and monkey bars and Sadie got in a little rolling practice on a blanket.

We had been telling Jake about the ponies that live on the islands and we still hadn't seen any so he started with the "where pony? where pony?" questioning. Boy was he really excited to see that our motel had two ponies that lived in a pen right in the front yard. We said "hi" to the ponies for a while, but when the bigger pony finally said a big "NEIGH!" back to us, Jake nearly climbed up my leg. We ate a picnic lunch next to the ponies and then Jake found a hose and watered the motel's plants (Just like Poppy's!)

Jake normally has a nap in the afternoon, so we checked in to our room and closed the shades and had some quiet time to see if Jake would take a little snooze. He was, of course, way too excited for a nap. So, we headed out to the beach and enjoyed the beautiful weather. The sound of the ocean knocked Sadie out and she slept the whole time we were there. Jake loved playing in the sand, chasing the surf back into the ocean, and getting chased by the waves back out of the ocean.

Right after crossing the bridge onto Chincoteague, there's a neat old Art Deco style movie house and we decided to take Jake to his first movie - Ratatouille. We lasted about an hour before he decided he'd rather flip all the empy seats up, each of which made a satisfyingly loud "clank" noise.

For dinner, we found a crab house and ordered a steamer pot with a giant pile of crabs, mussels, oysters and clams. It was the kind of place where each table was covered in brown paper and had a big trash can next to it. But by the time our food arrived it was an hour past Jake's bedtime and he hadn't had a nap and he was pretty wiped out. He really wanted to check out the gift shop that was full of toddler-level porcelain ponies (they must do a pretty good business from parents of toddlers who end up buying little piles of porcelain pony pieces). So to keep him interested in dinner, we decided to hand over one of the hammers they'd given us to help break open the crab shells. Well, that plan worked. It worked so well that he smashed all the crabs beyond recognition. He smashed his hot dog and french fries too. If we ever go back, I'm sure we'll see a picture of Jake with the instructions: "Do not give hammer to this boy" printed below it.

The next morning, when Jake woke up in his big boy bed (a first), he looked over at us in our bed, and Sadie in her crib, and had the biggest smile on his face. He really seemed to have a great time and that made us so happy. We got one more beach trip in before heading home. Both kids slept almost the whole way home, which I think was their way of saying "thanks!"

Click the link to the right or here to see more pictures.