Day 9: Finally a Blue Hen T-shirt

Today was the first day we really had a chance to get out and stretch our legs in Delaware (to the extent that it is possible to do so in such a tiny place) and our north-south traverse of the state cemented several earlier observations about Delaware.

1.       It is very small.

2.       It is very flat.

3.       It is very pretty.

4.       The roads are pretty good.

5.       The people are very nice.

It took about an hour-and-a-half to drive the 83 miles from Lewes to Newark (pronounced New Ark, not NEWurk; as in “Noah, where’s your boat?” Don’t know for sure young feller. Storm blew up last week and I lost her, along with a bunch of animals I had stowed on board. Guess I’ll have to build me a new ark”) home of the University of Delaware. Thus, essentially, we drove from the near the southeastern end of the state to near the northeastern end.

Because there are several things we will want to do in New Castle County (the northernmost of Delaware’s three counties) in the days and weeks ahead we were quite pleased to discover there is nice toll road that will speed our drives from Dover to the greater Wilmington area.

Newark is basically a suburb of Wilmington and the campus blends in with the city streets to the extent that it is difficult for the unfamiliar eye to clearly discern where the campus begins and where it ends. The primary clue that we were on the UofD campus was that the number of kids walking blithely across the street in heavy traffic while staring intently at the i-phones in their hands, oblivious to the world around them and the possibility that they could fatally squashed by a speeding car; spiked dramatically.

If the purpose of traveling to Newark is not obvious it should be – T-shirts. Delaware Blue Hen t-shirts.

We snagged a few of the much-needed t-shirts along with a Newark parking ticket for a meter that could not have expired more than five minutes before we returned to the car and headed off to the UofD baseball stadium where the Blue Hens were tangling with the Scarlet Knights of Rutgers.

It was a good game on a nice, warm, sunny, windy day. Not necessarily a well-played game (four errors for each team, and the scorer was being generous) but a good game nonetheless with three lead changes and plenty of home runs and close/unusual plays (i.e. a guy scoring from second on a fly ball) before UofD came back to score three runs in the bottom of the eighth to win 14-11.

Betsy had read somewhere about Sambo’s Tavern, a highly-regarded crab shack in the little fishing town of Leipsic, northeast of Dover.

It did not disappoint. Our waitress (whose husband is a crabber) said the season had just begun yesterday and the crab was fresh off the boat. We each had a cup of crab gumbo and a crab cake and it was absolutely fabulous! The only downside; no Delaware beers. Some Dogfish on tap and this place would be heaven.

Afterward we headed south on State Route 9 (not to be confused with U.S. 9 here in Lewes) that skirts along the eastern edge of Dover Air Force Base (which is huge).

It was as bucolic a setting as I think you can find anywhere in the U.S. and the drive reinforced to us that Delaware is far more rural and agriculturally-based than most people realize.

Oh my, I almost forgot to report on the work crew. Here's a video.

Also, big news in Lewes was the fire at the Dairy Queen just down the street from us.