Day 13 Corollary

There are three interesting (at least to me) things that I forgot to mention in the original post.

One is that the guy in the photo above is Mr. Roberts, a 1941 graduate of St. John’s College and the grandson of the guy that wrote Robert’s Rules of Order. Using a point of personal privilege, he provided the Mids and the Johnnies with some words of inspiration prior to the start of the match.

Two is that the guys in the photo below are 1984 SJC graduates and they sang, a capella, the school fight song (yes, apparently St. John’s does have a fight song). Perhaps not surprisingly, it seemed a bit dated. When they concluded with their rendition they offered a unique challenge for anyone to enter a contest to write a new school fight song. The winner will receive a cash award of $1,696 that they have, collectively, donated. (Note: The amount of the cash award was selected based on the year the school was founded, which may not have been too long before the current fight song was written).

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not post a quote from SJC Imperial Wicket Blake Myers that appeared on the back of his playing card (no, I’m not making that up – both the SJC and the Navy team members have playing cards). Blake opined; “Croquet is a Protestant sport of guilt, remorse, redemption and disappointment; it is not chess on grass.”

Day 13: SJC 3, USNA 2, DWP 0

That’s zero, as in blotto. The last time I drank gin and tonics for an entire warm, sunny afternoon was? Maybe when I was in college. Maybe never. Probably never again.

Despite my inebriated state or, perhaps, because of it the annual croquet match between the St. John’s College Johnnies and the United States Naval Academy Midshipmen was as thrilling for me as a croquet match will likely ever be.

First of all there is the crowd.

Folks I don’t think I am exaggerating when I estimate that the crowd on the front lawn of the SJC campus was 3,000-plus. The front lawn is quite large and it seemed that every square inch that was not marked off for a croquet court was covered by a quilt or blanket where Gatsby-era-clothed picnickers swilled alcoholic beverages.

Seriously, there probably hasn’t been a crowd of White people this drunk and this amped up in downtown Annapolis since they stopped auctioning slaves down at the city dock.

Faithful blog readers already know this, but I have created a separate page that explains more about SJC and the annual croquet match and it may be helpful to read that for a more complete understanding of this annual event.

However, for the purposes of this post, suffice to say it is, by far, the biggest event on the SJC campus each year.

While I am sure that the same is not true for the Mids make no mistake about it, they do take this thing seriously. The admiral and the captain who run the Academy were on hand for the opening ceremonies (which featured a song written by a Mr. Francis S. Key, SJC class of 1796) and the kids competing for Navy did not just pick up a mallet that morning and decided to stroll across the street for an afternoon in the sun.

Clearly they were quite skilled at the sport, which is not all that surprising because croquet requires a blend of patience, skill, strategy and teamwork; all attributes that I suspect the Navy seeks to instill in its future officers.

Tex and his partner found this out when they lost in a close match that lasted about two hours.

Afterward Tex’s partner came over to us (Betsy and I were seated courtside on our little square of blanket that Tex and Laurel had staked out for us early in the morning) and apologized, telling us it was his poor play that caused the loss.

I could not say that for sure because I don’t have enough understanding of the rules of the sport to fully distinguish between luck and talent. However, I do know that at one point Tex took off and advanced his white and red-striped ball around the entire layout of wickets by masterfully hitting the balls of his opponents (sorry if that choice of words conjured up a negative image for anyone) and then (through some arcane rule I don’t understand) went back (unsuccessfully) to help his partner advance through the course ahead of the oncoming Mids.

Ultimately, the Mids won the match because they both advanced around the court ahead of Tex’s partner. Fortunately, three of the other four Johnnie pairs won their matches and St. John’s retained the coveted Annapolis Cup for another year.

At least, I think that’s what happened.

At any rate, it was great fun and I will allow some of the many photos that Betsy took to tell the rest of the story; along with this link to an article about the match in Sunday's Baltimore Sun 

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-04-30/news/bs-md-croquet-match-20110430_1_croquet-team-annapolis-cup-croquet-field

There are a few background factoids that may be helpful to readers/photo viewers.

Each year Navy wears the same, very traditional, all white croquet uniform while the Johnnie uniform changes each year, at the whim of the Imperial Wicket (team captain). The uniforms have varied dramatically over the years, including last year’s basketball uniforms (a play on SJC often being confused with St. John’s University in New York, which is well-known for its basketball teams). One year I think they may have dressed as Vikings and, during the Cold War era, as Soviets.

The design of the uniforms is a closely-held secret that is not revealed to anyone that is not on the team until the team members emerge from a campus building for the introductions at the start of the match.

Blake Myers, the 2011 imperial wicket and Tex’s good friend, chose to replicate the uniforms of the Midshipmen – including close-cropped haircuts for every team member that did not meet Navy regulations for hair length (look at Tex’s photo in an earlier post to see the change).

  

While Blake did an admirable (pun intended) job of replicating the Mid’s uniforms there was a very subtle change in the slogan on the sweater.

As of this writing I am not sure exactly what the Navy slogan says but I think it is goes something like “we are not here for a long time we are just here for a good time” or words to that effect.

The slogan on the Johnnie sweaters read; “Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education” a Mark Twain quote that Blake is said to favor. Each SJC uniform also carried the number 38, apparently for no reason other than that Blake likes the number 38.

Day 12: 47.68 miles across Delaware

I can check another item off my bucket list.

I’ve now ridden my bicycle across an entire state in just one day (actually about half a day); and (I’m adding this parenthetical thought because you may read about this topic in a future post) I did not weenie out and go across the narrowest portion of a state that is not very wide to begin with. In fact, if you care to Google up a map you will see that State Route 24 traverses the WIDEST part of Delaware.

It was a chamber of commerce day, with sunny skies, temps topping out at about 70 and relatively low humidity (but not too dry).

In other words a perfect day to ride a bike across Delaware…except for the wind.

The wind has been blowing from the west ever since we left home and today was no different. I knew this. I thought about it. I thought about having Betsy drive me to Maryland and then riding back to Lewes (with the wind at my back). But I just liked the idea of walking out the front door, hopping on the bike and riding to Maryland (with a photo op at the state sign).

So off I went and, at about the 25-mile mark, at about mid-day, when the wind began to pick up…yes, I admit there was a cuss word or two, and some second thoughts. My MPH average plummeted from nearly 15 to less than 13 by the time I made it to Maryland.

But I did make it and now, (as Ralphie Parker would say) all is right with the world.

                                           Leaving Lewes for Maryland,

Given my slow progress I expected Betsy to be there to photo-document my triumphant and historic achievement; but she came barreling up in the truck behind me just as I crossed the state line.

Betsy had been distracted by her shopping experiences at a place we learned about from a lady at the Cape Henlopen State Park earlier in the week. Tucked on an obscure side road between Lewes and Rehoboth this place (which is only open on weekends) has fresh milk in glass bottles (the kind you have to shake to mix the cream with the milk), fresh pork chops, fresh bacon and fresh-cut asparagus.

I think we have found our grocery.

On the way home from Maryland we stopped (again) at the 16-Mile brewery (which was open this time) and had a great time talking to one of the owners (a native Delawareian). Basically he, his partner and one employee produce about 500 barrels of beer per year, which they sell though distributors in Delaware and central Pennsylvania.

                     One of the owners of the 16-Mile Brewery in Georgetown serves up a sample.

We purchased a “sampler case” of their unique 22-ounce aluminum bottles and filled our growler jug with their IPA to help wash down the leftover spaghetti from last night.

We took a new route from the Maryland border back to Lewes, via the 16-mile Brewery in Georgetown, and we continue to marvel at the rural, agriculturally-based culture of southern Delaware.

Our evening was spent on the porch in a continuing search (through the binoculars) for the confoundingly elusive New Jersey coastline.

As I was typing this missive Betsy was sitting on the porch with the binoculars and she watched the ferry leave Lewes for Cape May, N.J. In doing so she noticed that the ferry took a hard right (i.e. east) turn after clearing the tip of the breakwater and (lo and behold) as we trained the binoculars in that direction (which has seems to us to be hopelessly too far east and out to sea...there was land! Water towers, lighthouses, etc.).

We may have discovered New Jersey!!

Wow, what a great day!

Day 11: Stormy Skies and a Seal of Approval

Look carefully at the reflection in Betsy's photo of a rain puddle in the street below our porch (where the construction crew's truck is usually parked).

It was a very windy day with an almost certain chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon (a forecast that proved correct). Those conditions inspired us to get our exercise in relatively early in the day and to stick fairly close to home.

I rode my bike the two miles or so down to Cape Henlopen State Park where I parked and then jogged the nice asphalt trails through the park, including a sprint up Delaware’s steepest elevation gain. Actually I’m making that up (especially the part about the sprint), but the 80-foot rise from the beach to the overlook at the top of the Great Dune is quite substantial by Delaware standards. I also ran up the spiral steps to the top of the old lookout tower. There was a lot of wind at these high spots, of course, but there were also some awesome views even though it was cloudy and hazy.

The dune is, for the most part man-made. In the early 1800s the cape was flat and heavily wooded. However, in the mid-1800s most of the trees were cut down and that allowed the ever-present winds to create a huge sand dune. In the 1930s the Army built a concrete bunker at the top of the dune which has helped to stabilize and caused it to grow even higher.

After the jog I walked north on the beach for quite a ways, occasionally allowing the icy waves to reach my ankles. Eventually I came upon two ladies who were staring at and photographing a seal that had pulled out on the beach.

He looked at us and we looked at him. He did not seem overly concerned with our presence and it did not look to me like he could move too fast (although I was not of a mind to test that theory).

The ladies and I speculated about whether he was sick or injured or simply tired of swimming around in the windy ocean and taking a breather. I suggested that, perhaps, he was being chased by a shark, a circumstance the ladies admitted they had not considered.

Unfortunately I did not have a camera with me.

About this time the wind picked up (even more) and so I turned around and walked back down the beach, getting sandblasted the entire way.

When I talked to a ranger later at the park Nature Center on my way home he confirmed that the seal – which was probably a young Gray Seal (Harbor Seal would be the other possibility) – had likely simply grown tired and decided to haul out on the beach to rest. I forgot to mention my theory about the shark.

The Nature Center is a funky, laid-back place with some interesting exhibits; including an “Osprey Cam” that is providing real time video of an Osprey nest at the top of an 85-foot tower about a mile away.

Mr. and Mrs. Osprey have been tagged with a tracking device and the volunteer at the NC told me the two had arrived in Delaware about a month ago from their winter home in Brazil. Yes, that is correct. Brazil, the country in South America. He said they crossed the Caribbean by flying from Cuba to Venezuela.

He said Mr. Osprey averaged about 120 miles per day and arrived about a week before Mrs. Osprey.

During the week that Mr. Osprey was here alone he busied himself by gathering material for the nest, which he dumped in a pile at the top of the tower. When Mrs. Osprey arrived she then arranged the pile of material into a nest.

I’ll let readers draw their own conclusions.

The volunteer went on to say that, a few days ago, Mrs. Osprey had laid a single egg. Noting the short time period between their arrival in Delaware and the arrival of the egg, the NC volunteer commented with a sly chuckle; “They didn’t waste much time did they?”

LOL. Dude, what you do with the Osprey Cam video tapes in the privacy of your own home is your own business.

One last bit of Osprey news (I know, this is starting to sound like a reality show). Last year Mrs. Osprey laid three eggs and one of the hatchlings survived. He is spending the summer (winter?) in Brazil because the Osprey fledglings do not return north until they are two years old.

Another interesting factoid I picked up at the NC is that Delaware has never been struck by hurricane, at least not in the 400 years the white man has been here recording the weather. That does not mean it cannot happen. And Delaware has been hammered by several nasty nor’easters over the years that have caused considerable damage, including virtually destroying the boardwalk in Rehoboth in 1962.  

Betsy also rode her bike out to the park and we passed each other on the road.

After a little reading and a late lunch the rain began and the workers left and soon we did too.

We did a little more bike route scouting and exploring along the butt-ugly Ocean Highway between Rehoboth and Lewes and then drove the roughly 16 miles over to the 16-Mile Brewery in Georgetown.

16-Mile is a small, one-building operation and they had a hand-written sign posted on the door “Closed Today, Sorry For The Inconvenience.”

No problem. After a brief stop at the Essex County Court House (we are now one-third of the way to reaching our goal of visiting every court house in Delaware) we took the short drive from Georgetown to Milton, home of the Dogfish Head Brewery.

Dogfish is a substantially larger operation than 16-Mile and we sampled their selection of funky beers and browsed their gift shop where Betsy snagged a bicycle jersey she had eyed the day before at the brewpub in Rehoboth.  

There was a good downpour of rain while we were sampling and browsing and another after we arrived back at the condo.

Betsy fixed up a tasty batch of spaghetti for supper and we ate and read on the deck as we watched the rain.

We retired early to rest up for tomorrow, when sunny, clear, cool skies are predicted.

Note: All of the photos below were taken from the porch by Betsy on 4-28, except for the two sunrise photos which I took from the porch on 4-29.

Day 10: Flounder(ing?) In Delmarva

Even before we arrived in Lewes we had heard about Delmarva. Apparently it is quite the hopping place and the other jurisdictions in the area seem intent on comparing themselves to Delmarva. 

Delmarva has its own power company, a major bank with branches in many other cities and its own minor league baseball team, the Delmarva Shorebirds. Also, it seems many retailers are intent on proclaiming that their product is the brand most-favored by Delmarvaites (i.e. “the best pizza in Delmarva” “Delmarva’s favorite tattoo parlor” “the best-selling mattress in Delmarva” etc.).

The only problem was we could not figure out where Delmarva is located. Is it in Delaware or Maryland?

In vain I pored over maps looking for the place. Betsy googled her i-phone so ferociously in pursuit of information on Delmarva that I feared the overworked machine might burst into flames, immolating Betsy and turning her into a martyr among i-phone users that would trigger a wave of unrest among the masses; eventually leading to the overthrow of Steve Jobs, ending his long reign as the King of Silicon Valley.

Then one day we discovered that the Delmarva Shorebirds play their home games in Salisbury, Maryland. That’s odd I thought. A place as big as Delmarva doesn’t have its own baseball field? Then another thought popped into my head; DELaware, MARyland and VirginiA are the three states on the peninsula that stretches between the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay, from Philadelphia to Norfolk.

Sure enough, it turns out Delmarva is a made up name for this region and not a city.

Oh, never mind.

I spent a good portion of my morning driving around Sussex County scouting out a good route for my planned bike ride across the state of Delaware and I think I have found a route that will be reasonably safe and, with a few notable exceptions, fairly scenic.

One of those exceptions is the incongruously-named Mountainaire chicken processing plant that straddles the highway outside of Millsboro. Not only is the smell distasteful but the chicken feathers blowing across the highway are unsettling.

Also, the Mountainaire corporate motto “fresh young chickens” seems vaguely lurid.

Chickens seem to be a big business here in Delaware. There are lots and lots of those long, low chicken barns scattered about the countryside.

While I was out scouting for my bike route Betsy was conducting IABC business via conference call (while trying to ignore the four construction workers standing on our porch sawing, hammering and nailgunning). She also did some scouting of her own in downtown Lewes where she discovered a small grocery that specializes in Italian foods and another shop that sells nothing but puzzles.

I’m puzzled how someone can make a living selling nothing but puzzles.

About mid-afternoon we took off on a circular drive to Fenwick Island, a city on the coast in the extreme southeast corner of Delaware, just north of Ocean City, Maryland. We returned via the coast highway and stopped in Rehoboth Beach for an obligatory (and a somewhat chilly) stroll on the city’s famous boardwalk.

Of course we also stopped in for a pint and a growler at Rehoboth’s famous Dogfish Head brewpub.

Just a few blocks from the brewpub is the Big Fish Market where we picked up two fresh young flounder fillets.

Soon we were back at the quiet condo (the workers had gone home) where we reclaimed our porch and re-pondered our questions about what the many lights we see in the distance across the bay represent (anchored ships, the New Jersey shore?) over a few glasses of 60 minute IPA.

Lightly-breaded and pan-fried in olive oil, the fresh young flounder was superb.   

             Paraphrasing Sarah Palin; "I can see New Jersey from my condo."

OK, maybe not. But we can see the ferry FROM New Jersey as it approaches Lewes.

Below: scenes from bucolic rural Delaware.

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.

Day 8: Defending the Senior Essay

I am going to begin this post with a quiz asking readers why the buttons nearly burst from our shirts today.

Buttons popped because?:

A.      Betsy’s new breast implants have been installed.

B.      Dave has been working out with the new Bowflex machine (guaranteed to add five inches to your chest in 30 days or your money back) that he purchased at an “as seen on TV” outlet mall in Sevierville, TN.

C.      Betsy has been secretly working out on the Bowflex.

D.      Tex successfully defended his senior essay during questioning from three St. John’s College tutors.

E.       All of the above.

The correct answer is D (I’m considering returning the Bowflex and I think it would be prudent for me not to say anything more about breast implants at this time).

Hopefully the readers of this blog have already read Tex's senior essay, which can be found on the separate page tab labeled “Tex’s Senior Essay”.

His defense of the essay began when all of the 20 or so people gathered in a large, wood-paneled room on the top floor of one of the many red-brick buildings scattered about the leafy SJC campus stood as he and the three tutors (SJC-speak for professor) on his review panel entered. All four were robed in academic regalia and they took their seats at a table in the center of the room.

Tex was introduced by one of the tutors and he then read a relatively brief synopsis of the essay that he had prepared for the occasion.

In the unlikely event that you have not read the essay; it is an assessment of a book written by Galileo titled Two New Sciences.

Tex writes that the purpose of his essay is to; “…determine exactly how comprehensible the Galilean approach to nature is, and the penalties of having a method that may only be understood by a few people.”

In the book Galileo uses three characters to represent three levels of human reasoning. One comprehends the complexities of science while the other two struggle with this challenge, to varying degrees and in varying ways.

In his conclusion Tex suggests that the lesser two of the three reasoners should take on the challenge of acquiring the knowledge that the third character possesses. Tex writes; “If the multitude fails to take this challenge, the consequences are severe. If most people are poor reasoners who reject their own experience in favor of another person’s words, what use does this knowledge have?”

In the very first question out of the box one of the tutors challenged this premise using an Ayn-Rand- inspired line of interrogation that was essentially based on the premise of; “so what, who cares, what does it matter if the multitudes reason poorly?”.

Tex struggled mightily to answer those questions; never, seemingly, to the tutor’s satisfaction.

What made the exchange even more entertaining was the tutor himself. He reminded me a little of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist; tallish, angular and awkward, with an impatient, brusque demeanor. Furthermore, and more importantly, the guy speaks in heavily-accented English. In my imagination he would be the guy the Russians would bring in to interrogate a captured American spy.

The other two tutors were much less adversarial. Tex stuck to his guns and (it seemed to me) more than held his own, occasionally quoting himself from the paper and also drawing on concepts from other books read in the SJC program.

This seemed to play well with all three of the tutors because at St. John’s College students are not graded on their ability to answer questions correctly but rather on their ability to ask probing questions and then thoughtfully discuss a range of possible answers.

Tex seemed to pass this test with flying colors.

Annapolis is a two-hour drive from Lewes, thus four hours of our day was spent driving.

On the way over we went through Dover and stopped at the state Welcome Center to pick up brochures, maps, flyers, etc. that will help us plan out the days ahead; so that we can achieve our goal of “really getting to know Delaware.”

After the essay defense we went with Tex, his girlfriend Laurel and good friend John Vining to a bar/restaurant for celebratory drinks and snacks.

This might be a good segue to inform blog readers of Tex’s post-graduation plans.

He and Laurel are going to spend the summer in Austin where she will work in an outlet of the same retail chain where she works now in Annapolis and he will commute to an internship at a small brewery in Blanco. Believe it or not Tex is receiving a stipend from SJC for this internship.

In the fall they will move to Phoenix where Laurel plans to work as a teaching assistant in a charter school that is based on a “great books” program similar to SJC’s.

As I was typing this missive I noted that the workers arrived before 7:30 a.m. to continue their arduous (and noisy) task of putting new wood shingles on the exterior of the condo building. The generator and the nail gun fired up about 7:50. I wonder how Betsy is sleeping downstairs?

 The ladder and the guy on the left are standing next to the bedroom window.

  

Day 7: Easter in Lewes

As the photo indicates I began Easter with my own sunrise service and spent most of the remainder of the pre-church morning catching up on the blog.

I am sure we displaced someone from their normal seat in the third row of the Lewes Presbyterian Church where the average age of the congregants appeared to be just slightly less than the average in Presbyterian churches throughout the USA – which I think is about 71.2.

Seriously, the joys and concerns section of the service was dominated by prayers for people who had broken something in a fall.

“Be careful walking out of here,” I whispered to Betsy, “we could be next.”

By Lewes standards the sanctuary at Lewes Presbyterian is fairly modern and it is the third sanctuary built on the current site…in 1832.

The Presbyterians were rightfully proud of having raised $1.9 million for the restoration (a factoid the preacher artfully tied into his Easter message, which he carefully read word for word from a prepared text without the aid of a teleprompter).

Also, to be fair, I should mention that there were two other services held Sunday at Lewes Presbyterian. The one we attended was the “traditional” service at 11 a.m. and it likely attracted the older folks among Lewes Presbyterian’s 300 members (at least, let's hope so).

Besides Presbyterians there is a lot of other stuff in Lewes that is really old.

Lewes was “discovered” by no less an exploratory luminary than Henry Hudson himself, in 1609. Because it has a natural harbor the Dutch established a whaling station here but that didn’t last too long. All 32 inhabitants were killed in a tiff with some of the locals who apparently took exception to Mr. Hudson’s “discovery”.

The English soon displaced the Dutch and, in 1682, the “lower counties of the Delaware (river)” were conveyed to William Penn who named the little spot with the natural harbor at the point where the Delaware River meets the Atlantic Ocean “Lewes”, in honor of a town in Sussex County, England. (Note: Lewes, DE is also in Sussex County. What an odd coincidence?).

As the cannonball that is still stuck in the side of one of the downtown buildings – fired from a British frigate during the War of 1812 – attests, Lewes has had its share of troubles with foreigners over the years.

After a scrumptious dinner we took off on our bikes to tour a site that was developed specifically to repel foreign invasion, nearby Henlopen State Park. Before becoming a park the Henlopen peninsula served as a Navy guard post protecting the Delaware Bay from German warships in World War II.

Apparently it worked. In 1942 a German U-boat was captured just off the coast of Lewes.

Soon after the war technological advances in missal defense made the base obsolete and the hundreds of acres of concrete bunkers, watchtowers and barracks were turned over to the state in 1964.

My, my what a fantastic park facility it has become. There are miles of pristine beaches, sand dunes and stands of pine trees interconnected with roads and hike and bike trails that, for the most part, use the remnants of the military’s road system. One of the concrete watchtowers is still open and you can climb the spiral staircase inside for a fantastic view of everything from Rehoboth Beach to Lewes and – on a clear day – across the bay to New Jersey.

On the ride home we explored a section of Lewes we had not yet been to but it was just more of the same old same old – quaint street after quaint street lined with impeccably maintained historic homes. I think Lewes may be the nicest “beach town” I’ve ever seen (of course, being from Texas, that is not necessarily much of a compliment).

We closed the day by watching a thunder and lightning storm sweep across New Jersey.

I was the only person at the beach Sunday wearing an Astros shirt? We did dip our toes in the icy (and I do mean icy) Atlantic, but no other body parts have made it....yet.