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jazzfishIt's only been a few days but it's already difficult to reconcile "vacation" and "normal life."
Most of my trips out there have involved camping at the Assateage National and State Parks, on the north end of the island. The Chincoteague Wildlife Refuge is over an hour's drive from the campsites, so I've only ever been down there once. It's a fairly nice place: the town's cleaned up a bit in the last five years, and the refuge itself has lots of good walking and critter-viewing.
There were the obligatory ponies, but also waddling fox squirrels, raccoons, and a snapping turtle. Big ghost crabs commuting back and forth between their holes five feet apart. Lots of happy toads after the rain on Satyrday and Sunday nights. Laughing gulls and sandpipers by the truckload, and long graceful egrets and the occasional osprey.
We got a couple of gorgeous sunsets out the back of the hotel, and an amazing thunderstorm on Satyrday night. That made the hike on Sunday muggier than I'd've liked. Other than that, the weather was great: quite breezy, and warm but not so hot I felt like melting.
We spent a lot of time on the beach, of course. The main beach is, well, it's a beach. Crowded (on the weekends anyway) and picked clean by tourists. Down by the protected plover nesting grounds it's better, but still pretty empty. However! If you're willing to hike a ways there's a service road with a cut-through that leads to a basically empty stretch of beach. Not as good for lounging on (it's a 2.5-mile hike to get there), but wonderfully isolate. We found a half-dozen conch shells, and a starfish that had washed up, still alive. (Threw it back. I hope it made it.)
Downtown Chincoteague's a decent place, albeit one overrun by mallards in the same way that most cities have pigeons. There's a couple of good bookstores (I snagged a copy of Michael Swanwick's Jack Faust, while![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nixve acquired a SFBC collection of Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint and Privilege of the Sword), and a handful of neat little art/stuff shops (kind of like Xanadu in B'burg). We had lunch every day at a sandwich shack called the Sea Star that looks a touch run-down (if it were in DC I'd expect them to be selling crack out of the back), and ice cream from the Island Creamery every night. We did not stop at Mr. Whippy, partly because I'm not a fan of soft-serve and partly because it's hard to tell whether it's an ice cream parlor or a drive-through BDSM store. Especially since in the sign, the position of the "Y" makes it look suspiciously like Mr. Whippy is holding a flogger.
And, you know. Vacation. Lots of time relaxing, in the company of someone I don't see nearly often enough. Good things. Eh, well.
Most of my trips out there have involved camping at the Assateage National and State Parks, on the north end of the island. The Chincoteague Wildlife Refuge is over an hour's drive from the campsites, so I've only ever been down there once. It's a fairly nice place: the town's cleaned up a bit in the last five years, and the refuge itself has lots of good walking and critter-viewing.
There were the obligatory ponies, but also waddling fox squirrels, raccoons, and a snapping turtle. Big ghost crabs commuting back and forth between their holes five feet apart. Lots of happy toads after the rain on Satyrday and Sunday nights. Laughing gulls and sandpipers by the truckload, and long graceful egrets and the occasional osprey.
We got a couple of gorgeous sunsets out the back of the hotel, and an amazing thunderstorm on Satyrday night. That made the hike on Sunday muggier than I'd've liked. Other than that, the weather was great: quite breezy, and warm but not so hot I felt like melting.
We spent a lot of time on the beach, of course. The main beach is, well, it's a beach. Crowded (on the weekends anyway) and picked clean by tourists. Down by the protected plover nesting grounds it's better, but still pretty empty. However! If you're willing to hike a ways there's a service road with a cut-through that leads to a basically empty stretch of beach. Not as good for lounging on (it's a 2.5-mile hike to get there), but wonderfully isolate. We found a half-dozen conch shells, and a starfish that had washed up, still alive. (Threw it back. I hope it made it.)
Downtown Chincoteague's a decent place, albeit one overrun by mallards in the same way that most cities have pigeons. There's a couple of good bookstores (I snagged a copy of Michael Swanwick's Jack Faust, while
nixve acquired a SFBC collection of Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint and Privilege of the Sword), and a handful of neat little art/stuff shops (kind of like Xanadu in B'burg). We had lunch every day at a sandwich shack called the Sea Star that looks a touch run-down (if it were in DC I'd expect them to be selling crack out of the back), and ice cream from the Island Creamery every night. We did not stop at Mr. Whippy, partly because I'm not a fan of soft-serve and partly because it's hard to tell whether it's an ice cream parlor or a drive-through BDSM store. Especially since in the sign, the position of the "Y" makes it look suspiciously like Mr. Whippy is holding a flogger.And, you know. Vacation. Lots of time relaxing, in the company of someone I don't see nearly often enough. Good things. Eh, well.
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Date: 2008-06-05 08:26 pm (UTC)When I got back from Italy I realized that my normal life was actually some kind of nightmare, and now I need to find a way to escape it. The crazy thing is that I used to feel that it was perfectly fine to sit in traffic and a cubicle for ten hours a day.
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Date: 2008-06-06 02:08 pm (UTC)Best of luck waking up from your nightmare. I'd be happy to shake you and bring tea if that'll help. :)