Ocean City, Maryland

After spending a little time back in the States and stopping in on family and friends in the northeast (highlights included giving Willoughby a bath, a trip to Bow Lake, a three-way mini-golf tie, shooting a .22 rifle, and reorganizing the car... AGAIN), we made our way down to Ocean City, Maryland for the Freeman Family Reunion! Adam got to meet (almost) the whole side of the family at once- he stood up well to the challenge.

We rented a house just a short walk from the beach, which was how we spent most of our days. The water was excellently warm most of the time, and the sun was really hot- fortunately my Aunt Janet was clever enough to bring us a sun tent. We all got to brush up on our boogie boarding- sometimes the waves were pretty terrible, but we all got some good rides in nonetheless. My cousins Shane and Tyler even managed to successfully double boogie board- with Tyler holding onto Shane's back for dear life. I made them promise that if something went horribly awry, they wouldn't tell their mom it was my idea. ;)

While at the beach we were lucky enough to see a  pod of dolphins frolicking off of the shore- there must have been at least ten or fifteen of them! Walking on the beach one night, we also found a sand flea that was glowing in the dark- bioluminescence is pretty friggin cool. Except that (don't read this part, Mom) sand fleas are not actually bioluminescent... but whatever was eating the sand flea was. (Bleck.) Adam also caught some of the plentiful crabs wandering around the beach at night... and they paid him back during the next few days by pinching his toes when we were swimming.

Adam and I ventured down the boardwalk one night, where we were disappointed to find a lot of the same stores over and over again (not like most touristy places where it's different stores that all have the same stuff, these were literally the same stores). But we did have a lovely time riding the ferris wheel, and the ticket guy forgot to take our tickets! So we went on the other ferris wheel in Ocean City the next night, where Adam almost convinced the ~8yr old sharing the ride with us that we might get stuck at the top of the ferris wheel forever. He even asked the kid "Did you bring any food?". We'll have to work on age-appropriate banter with him. =P

As you might expect, we went out for a lot of seafood on the trip- the highlights were the all-you-can-eat deals. I have never seen any one person consume so many crab legs as Shane did at "Jonah and the Whale Seafood Buffet". I was a lot more excited about the desserts myself! Fortunately they had a cheaper deal for non-seafooders like my cousin Brianna and me. Other than this place, we had rather disappointing luck with restaurants in the area- the food was just not that good. But the grocery stores were not overpriced, so buying food to cook worked out pretty well for us.

At the end of the trip we had a Freeman family photo op on the beach, resulting in lots of great pictures- serious or otherwise. Adam decided it would be fun to take a picture IN the water. We got wet. I did not think that part was very fun. Good thing he'd been racking up brownie points all week.



Verdict- Ocean City is a good beach vacation, but don't go for the stores, restaurants, or peace and quiet- there are too many people for that!