Chincoteague

One of the challenges with being a wildly popular blogger is that sometimes your fans come up to you on the street and beg you to write about their favorite subjects. This happened to me most recently at Columbia Island when one of my biggest fans asked me to write about my recent trip to Chincoteague.

The origin of this trip really goes back to 2014 when I was part of group trip to Chincoteague. This led to a return to Chincoteague, this time with spouses, in 2016. That trip was a lot of fun for just about everyone - though not so much so for Valerie, whose mom was fatally ill (she died just days after the trip). Still, the experience of getting everyone including significant others together was so enjoyable that we vowed to do it again. Life got in the way for a while, but I eventually orchestrated a follow-on group get-together, this one a combination of paddling and bluegrass music at Claytor Lake/Floyd, VA. At the end of that trip we started thinking about the next follow-on and decided it would be a return to Chincoteague, this time all squeezing into Jim G's house there. Which brings us to the present trip.

Jim had long talked about his house in Chincoteague, but in his self-deprecating way had described it as being quite modest. Valerie and I rolled up on Friday to discover that it was, in fact, a spacious and lovely farmhouse, tastefully decorated in a style that combined farmhouse and seashore styles (you can see it here). Valerie and I were the first after Jim to arrive - which gave us first crack at choice of bedrooms, something of value since the group was pushing the capacity of the house. Jim headed off to paddle while Valerie and I settled in after our long drive, venturing only as far as downtown Chincoteague a few blocks away where we got lunch and shopped at a gourmet sandwich shop.

Others soon began arriving. Rob and Barb arrived all excited about the pony penning that was apparently going on that weekend. This is not the big pony swim and auction - that's in July. Rather, in the spring and fall the "saltwater cowboys" of Assateague round up ponies to do a health check and identify any new foals.

Here come some ponies

Valerie chose to hang back at the house while Rob, Barb and I headed over to check out the pony event. Thanks to Misty of Chincoteague, the wild ponies of Assateague/Chincoteague are nationally famous and the event drew spectators from all over. Some people next to us had driven in from the mid-west (I forget where - all those mid-west states are kinda the same). There were pony junkies who could identify individual horses in the herd, maybe from studying web sites such as this one, which has individual pictures of ponies along with their names.

Ponies in the pen

It was one of those events that was fun because it was an event. I'm not a pony junkie, and standing around waiting for the cowboys to occasionally drive some horses into the pen wasn't all that interesting, but the air of excitement and the energy of the spectator group made it a fun, celebratory event. Eventually the event wound down and we headed back to the house, stopping along the way at the well-regarded Island Creamery for some awesome ice cream (so awesome that I had seconds - which is two more servings of ice cream than I usually allow myself).

Back at the house we settled into our typical mode of enjoying some drinks, over-eating, and socializing.

Dinner

Chilling out

Saturday, Kathy arrived, having set out super-early from DC. When it came time to head out for the day's activities we split into kayaking and non-kayaking groups. The non-paddling group strolled downtown, fetishized yarn, visited the beach, napped, and such. The kayakers headed to the launch at the southern end of the island at the end of Main Street. In previous years we had first dutifully stopped downtown to buy launch permits, but this time our Jim told us we didn't need them (signs to the contrary) and so we skipped this step. The wind had settled a little from Friday's gusty weather, but the residual wind combined with the tides made for somewhat slow going as we paddled across towards Assateague Island. We stopped several times to make sure everyone was OK, each time losing considerable ground as the wind and current pushed us back in the direction we had come. Finally, we all agreed that we were going to go looking for ponies and then dip into Tom's Cove. Alas, there were no ponies to be found - I suspect that they were all either penned up or too spooked by the previous day's round-up to show themselves. We made it fairly far down into Tom's Cover and even explored a little side channel which took us all the way to the road we had driven on the day before to see the ponies - but still saw no horses. I'm not sure if it was conditions, increasing age, illness (Suzanne had a bad cold) or confused decision-making, but while we muddled around on the water for quite a while we covered only about 8 1/2 miles. On our previous trip we had made it out to the sea buoy and over to the lighthouse for a paddle of 11+ miles. Maybe we're getting lazier, but when we finished up we still felt we had had a nice paddle.

Back at the house we settled into our typical mode of enjoying some drinks, over-eating, and socializing.

Glassy despite the currents

Where the water meets the sky

Lunch break

Stretching/relaxing during lunch

Tom's Cove channel

Sunday brought buckets of rain. Paddling in cold, drenching rain is no fun so instead we hung out, took our time packing up and clearing out the house, and then all went out for breakfast, where we over-ate and socialized. After that some of the group headed to the new Harriett Tubman Underground Railroad Museum. Valerie and I gritted our teeth and dove right into the drive home, which included awful bridge traffic. They've got one lane closed on the bridge which, combined with the fact that everyone on the eastern shore did what we did - packed up and headed home early - made for hours of delay. Yuck. Way to undo the mellowness of the weekend.

But still, well worth it. It did seem that the weekend was over almost as soon as it began - next time, three nights!

Chincoteague Weekend

Valerie once said that her ideal vacation wasn't about a particular destination - it was going away with a good group of friends. Not being a people person (to put it mildly), I think in terms of dream destinations, but I guess she has a point. I mean, I don't think Teaneck, New Jersey makes many "Top Ten Vacation Destinations" lists, but the night before my recent Manhattan circumnavigation the group went out and had an uproariously fun dinner at a Yakitori restaurant in Teaneck. It was the people, not the place. So, when Bela's new bride Leigh came up with the idea of a fall getaway weekend, I saw the opportunity to make a couple of days of the group trip thing come to pass. And in a place much nicer than Teaneck.

Lavinder house view

One challenge for me is that Valerie's not a kayaker, and so is not necessarily going to have a good time on a trip where all everyone does is talk, eat, drink, and smell like kayaking. Leigh is another non-paddler, and so in this case I knew Valerie would have someone to hang with. When Rob signed on for the trip I also encouraged (successfully!) him to invite his wife, who is only a half-hearted paddler/camper, along. There's actually more to the organizational story of this trip: I won't go into all the Chinc-intrigue of how this trip became cross-threaded with a long-planned Pirates of Georgetown get-away, or how this trip squeezed out a trip to a PATC cabin, but when the dust settled there was a happy ending. We had ourselves a mega-weekend: ten people staying at the rented Lavinder House (a funky old place once owned by actress Linda Lavin, but Alice doesn't live there anymore) plus three more at the house Jim owns in town. 

We all rolled in over the course of Friday afternoon. Friday night was spent settling in, catching up, enjoying the sunset, and planning Saturday's paddle. Food was, as usual, abundant. Friday's dinner included multiple variations of chili to suit everyone's tastes and constraints: vegetarian and meat, with and without onions. There was cornbread, and there was delicious fruit crumble for dessert. And Rob, freshly home from one of his many international trips, gave up some much needed sleep and took the time before the weekend to prepare the potions required to make the group's favorite cocktail, the bufala negra, and so we were all well-oiled.

Friday night socializing

The forecast for Saturday was a windy one, and so with input from local expert Jim we planned a trip on the relatively protected waters between Assateague and Chincoteague Islands. Our plan was to launch from a marina at the southern tip of Chincoteague and paddle up in between the two islands. Normally it can be fun to venture out into Tom's Cove at the southern end of Assateague or even go around the island and poke out into the ocean, but we figured that for this trip it conditions were going to be too rough to do any of that. However, the forecast high winds weren't due to start until late morning. When we launched Saturday it was pretty calm and so with consensus from the group we decided to risk paddling down to some of the more exposed areas. Our decision was rewarded; down at the south end of Assateague we were joined by some dolphins and got to paddle in conditions that were playful - choppy enough to be a little interesting, but well within our skills. Still, we could tell things were picking up and after watching the dolphins for a while we turned around and headed to the more protected waters that were our original destination.

Trip planning for Saturday

As if dolphins weren't enough, as we paddled up along Assateague we saw ponies grazing by the water's edge, and in a shallow spot (we were paddling at low tide and it got shallow enough that at one point we had to walk the boats over a sand bar) some of the group found a live conch in the water. We chose to take a lunch break at a beach within sight of the ponies, for a true Assateague experience.

Suzanne and a dolphin

Lunch break

Our route - we traced a picture of an egret!

After lunch we continued north for a ways, but the wind was really starting to pick up, blowing up to 20 KT coming from the west southwest - meaning we'd be paddling right into it on the way home. Indeed, the ride back turned out to be a workout as we fought the wind and the waves. Larry actually had to be towed for a little bit when his back started spasming from the exertion (fairly or unfairly, we turned to Tom to be the tow truck). As I've said before, if I'm going to paddle in a strong wind I'd rather paddle into it than have it coming from just about any other point - it's hard to keep control of your boat with following waves, and beaming waves want to knock you over - but paddling into the wind is a workout! Slowly and steadily, slowly and steadily, we made our way back to the marina. 

Ponies

Meanwhile, back on land Valerie, Leigh and Barbara spent the day having a good time visiting the yarn shop in town and visiting the Assateague lighthouse. There's a saying in the bike world that the correct number of bikes to own is "N+1", where N = the number of bikes currently owned. [1] Clearly, similar rules apply to kayaks and skeins of yarn.

Sunset selfie

Saturday's sunset

Saturday delivered a particularly beautiful sunset and so we started the evening with appetizers (including Valerie's widely praised baked brie) out on one of the house's several decks. As the light faded we retired inside for another fabulous dinner, this time a Mediterranean chicken, with homemade strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert, followed by the inevitable orgy.

Kidding.

The evening was spent in more good conversation. I'm a guy who has had a total of five addresses in his life: three in New York City and two in Arlington, and so I'm always in awe of the world-hopping experiences of this group. Bela and Rob in the kitchen comparing notes on Senegal. Marilyn's recent experience teaching English in China, Yvonne in the living room mentioning how last week she bumped into her old friend the Eritrean ambassador to the U.N. at her Ecuadorean cousin's wedding on the International Space Station (OK, I'm exaggerating - but only a little), and so on, and so on. The conversation was hot and heavy enough that we thankfully never gave an opening to that guy who brings instruments and traps the group into listening to his pitiful musical caterwauling. The only music was the singing of "Happy Birthday" to the three people whose birthdays fall in close proximity to the weekend.

Dinner is served!

Sunday we all had to be out early. Lavinder House rules require that you be out by 10 AM, and Jim's group was getting out at about the same time. After a breakfast which featured something called a "Dutch Baby", we packed up and headed out. A subset of the group went out for another kayak outing. Sadly, Valerie had been getting phone calls all weekend relating to her mom's declining health and so we headed straight home so that she could prepare for a trip up to see her mom. 

Despite the sad family under-current, it was a really great weekend. The only negative thing I can say about the trip is that it was too short. 

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[1] This is one of the rare times I'll reference the widely quoted, but odious, Velominati Rules.