What a great day to wake before sunrise and head over to the east side of Oxford for a direct view of the rising sun.

It’s nice and quiet here on a Wednesday morning outside the main tourism season. Just us, the birds, the Tred Avon River, and a growing satisfaction of the experience, this is all ours.

While she may difficult to see sitting there on the right, we sat next to the water for a good long time to enjoy this luxurious start of the day.

Back at the Ruffled Duck Inn, we were spoiled with an incredible breakfast of artfully arranged fruit, including honeydew, cantaloupe, strawberries, pineapple, and grapes. An omelet with spinach, mushroom, and feta with a side of small phyllo dough pastries filled with jam rounded things out. We are ready to take on the day.

We wanted to take the ferry from Oxford west over to Bellevue on the other side of the Tred Avon River, but we were too early. As we felt like getting out on our sightseeing adventure, we headed north and then south on our way toward Taylor Island.

Once we were on Smithville Road, surrounded by some luscious grasslands, we saw that we didn’t have enough map resolution to figure out which (if any) of the side roads we should venture down, so we circumnavigated the peninsula, skipping even more detours.

The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park is out in the middle of all this, but seeing this has already been a detour, Caroline is excited for the ponies of Chincoteague, and I want us to visit Rehoboth Beach over in Delaware because the name is intriguing we forego the park during this visit.

The woman in an orange shirt was on a mission to save the orange turtle in the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge.

Bestpitch Ferry Bridge between Bucktown and Henry’s Crossroads appears to be the road less traveled. This is our form of winning.

This is not Millie’s Roadhouse in Vienna, Maryland, where we had lunch, but Millie’s is where we stopped. This place was along the road somewhere that could still be in Maryland, or maybe it’s in Delaware. No matter where it is, it no longer serves the purpose of sheltering people.

Georgetown, Delaware, is a quaint town on Highway 9 on our way to the beach. A Mountain Mudd Espresso hut came to our rescue as our eyes were growing heavy after lunch.

Dewey Beach in Delaware. You might ask, if we were in a hurry to reach Chincoteague, why would we head north? It couldn’t have only been the name Rehoboth that would pull us up here, could it? For the truth, see the photo below.

At how many state shorelines can Caroline step into the ocean? By the way, don’t get the impression that if she stepped into the southern shore of the state’s coast, she’d be satisfied; the more places along the ocean, river, and lake, the better.

Fenwick Island Lighthouse in Delaware could have been yet another valid reason to drive up this way. With over 700 lighthouses in America, it’s impossible that we’ll ever see them all. Turns out that August 7 is National Lighthouse Day, when many lighthouses across America are free to visit, and in New Jersey, just south of us here in Maryland, the state has reward programs for those who see a certain number of lighthouses on this one true important day in American culture.

Two years ago when my mother-in-law was visiting exactly at this time of year, I blogged about our travel plans to do much of what we are doing out here in 2007. That trip back East, for some reason or other, was derailed but not our desire to see the places that we dreamt of. When Caroline was a girl she read the book Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry, and the idea of visiting the real place that actually exists outside of the imagination of the author is a serious treat for my wife.

Seriously, think about this. There’s an island in America that is protected as a National Seashore because of a bunch of wild ponies that ended up here nearly 200 years ago. Now, those with the means are able to drive out here for a day of pony gazing, and those who might be inclined can even purchase a wild pony at the auction held every July when the ponies are rounded up and made to swim from Assateague to Chincoteague Island.

If there’s a negative aspect to these fast orientation trips into America, it would have to be the brevity of time we can allocate to the most amazing places we wander into. Just look at this pony at the water’s edge with the glistening water framing the world in front of it: we could have stayed here forever until we moved 100 feet in either direction and caught ourselves mesmerized by the next sight. I wonder if there’s a part of us still out there watching this horse for eternity.

Nope, no ponies here, but there is the matter of ocean in Maryland on Assateague Island.

Trust me, she was out in the water, but this picture of Caroline was prettier, so I’m sharing it. If you look to the left behind my wife, you might get some idea of just how hard the wind is blowing out here.

The few birds that braved this side of the island were being whipped around in the currents and seemed to struggle to stay aloft.

Back on the Sinepuxent Bay side of the island, things are relatively calm

Time to leave the ponies on the north side of Assateague and head south. On our way back through the park entrance, we stopped at the visitor’s center and met a girl who was also named Caroline. She was incredibly helpful and even entertaining as she explained horseshoe crabs and whelks and also did impressions of pufferfish, sleeping horses, and, by request, even a starfish. We certainly received our fair share of laughs for our stop-in.

Crossing into Virginia, which they say is for lovers. I’d say we meet that criteria.

Assateague Lighthouse on Chincoteague Island, Virginia, but it’s getting late and we are being eaten alive by mosquitos. We spotted a few ponies down this way, though nothing like what we were seeing up north.

Minutes later, at the ocean, the sky is turning stormy and gray as the sun is fully under the horizon. Nothing left to do but continue our trek south to Nassawadox, Virginia, for our night at the Anchor Motel that we are failing to find. It turns out that they changed their name to Best Value Inn years ago and forgot to inform us as we made our reservation sheesh. Dinner was almost at a Burger King, but after waiting forever with other people waiting longer than us and getting angry, we asked for and received a refund that allowed us to head across the street to a bar & grill that was probably no better than the worst Burger King on earth.