Day 32, May 4, 2016 at Lewes DE, driving the Delaware Beach areas and towns.

Day 32, May 4, 2016 at Lewes DE, driving the Delaware Beach areas and  towns.

t was rainy, misty, with a light drizzle. Not a great day for getting out and chasing the birds, but we did keep an eye open even if we directed our attention to other things.

Today we decided would be a great day to do laundry.  Of course sometimes, the amount of clothing that is left on the shelves when traveling, often determines that. So…we checked out the best possible place and found, to our surprise, a very nearby  laundry (“Suds O Matic”), that had a feature  we had never seen before. (Once before in Nebraska we come across a campground that was completely “non person” involved and was credit card friendly. Just put in your credit card and you  get to choose your site and length of stay, and it will take your credit card. That was all were was to it.) This Laundry was about the same way. The machines (Washers and Dryers) were built to accept a “in house” credit card that you bought at a credit card machine (Like an ATM) , and you selected the amount of money that you felt you could use in the washers and dryers. The card then was worth whatever you credited it with. Then each machine was programmed to receive as much time as you wanted (27 minutes for a wash ) . You could add minutes in increments by merely sliding the credit card there in the proper slots. Dryers used  increments of six minutes.  It took a little help from the assistant, but we managed  to get through it. Excellent washers and dryers. The washers held 45#, so only two were used.  Some of you may have used this technology, but it was a “first” for us. A short stop at Walgreens to order some meds for Ruth after the laundry, took only a few minutes.

We then travelled down Highway 1 to the beaches and did stop to look for birds as we went. The thousands of large, redundantly roomy, homes and “summer cottages” continued for miles.  Few of them held occupants at this time of the year.  We did poke in to the roads that led to the beaches and to the “Back Bays” to look for birds, but saw just the usual gulls and terns.

The Ocean on the Delaware Eastern Shore

The long Boardwalk at Rehobeth , Delaware
This is one half of its length.

The Indian River Bridge north fo Ocean City Md

This is the route that is located along the Eastern
Coast here in Delaware. To (Two) One?

A Lesser yellowlegs

Ruddy Turnstone

The surprise of the day were these (7 of them), Brant Geese.

It was at lunch , parked in a Marina, (where we were told to leave after lunch)  we had a number of birds come within a few feet of the truck so we had closeup views of them. Two  of them were new to us as we had not seen them before. They are in particular: the BRANT GOOSE, who fly to the northernmost Canadian Islands to breed; and the LEAST SANDPIPER, another long flier who heads for the northern provinces of Canada if not the far Arctic.  A RUDDY TURNSTONE also appeared at lunch although we had see a few of then before. They fly also to the Canadian Islands in the Arctic.

A few side drives brought us to the end of the road in Henlopen Acres which is also on the Beach of the Atlantic Ocean. We were impressed with two ladies , who gave us directions, that were deep into planting the spring flowers in the town’s flower beds in the medians of the streets. In that to was raining and only 50 F, they were wearing yellow  “slickers” , mud boots and were hard at planting the flowers. They gave us directions willingly. When I hailed them I addressed they as “guys” but soon saw that they were women and corrected my greeting.

Even at that we still totaled  33 birds for the day. A good effort with conditions being what they were.  We are closely approaching 150 birds totaled. Tomorrow we will attempt to go to Bombay Hook NWR about 69 miles north. Guess we better take a lunch! Ha! The name  comes from the Dutch (early settlers here ) because they called it “Bompies Hoeck” meaning “little tree point”. But more on that tomorrow.

A Special Project...

One of the towers used in WW2, to watch
for German spies coming ashore and for submarines .

There is now , an effort to restore the towers
 for history and visitors. There are  many of
these towers along the East Coast.