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August 07, 2006
That's one hot beach!
While all of this was going on, our cousin Sarah from Kansas came to visit for a week. Now, like I said, Sarah is from Kansas. But Sarah is really from Kansas. She experienced many major firsts while she was with us: first large body of water (Chesapeake Bay, Maryland), first moving walkway (BWI Airport, Baltimore), first seafood (blue crab, Rock Hall), first saltwater swim (Betterton Beach, Maryland) (which was actually a brackishwater swim, but whatever), first IMAX movie (Natural History Museum, DC) and first revolving door (Hard Rock Cafe, Baltimore). That's all aside from her firsts of being in Maryland, Virginia and our nation's great capital (great nation's capital?). It is easy to thoroughly enjoy someone's visit when that someone is so excited about everything that you see and do. There's nothing worse than trying to entertain someone who is so jaded that everything you do with them is totally boring, which is not unlikely when you're hanging out with me and matthew. (What I'm saying is, we loved having Sarah come visit.)
Our trip to Betterton Beach, which is just a 20-minute drive from Chestertown, was surprising even for jaded old me. (Ha.) I hadn't been to Betterton since I was about 5, when the beach was all dumpy and scummy and gross, and the water was scary because I couldn't swim and the water wasn't very clear and was probably full of huge underwater snakes and bugs and slimy biting things, and, of course, Chessie. Well, we were delighted to find that the beach had been cleaned up (no signs of Chessie, either) and was really very pleasant. We picnicked under the trees, and then made our way out on the sand.
I wore matthew's flip-flops because Iggy ate mine, and he was barefoot. Mere seconds into our jaunt down towards the water, matthew suffered an agonizing case of hot feet. After hopping from foot to foot, he discovered the best way to make his way across the beach was to sprint until he couldn't stand it, then to sit down until he couldn't stand it, and then to sprint again, and so on. It wasn't even that wide of a beach, but he had to make several pit stops.
We also took a kayaking adventure out of Rock Hall on Saturday morning. We rented kayaks from a the Swan Haven B&B which is a very nice place with a very nice owner. We only just poked out into the bay before returning to the safety of the river, but saw lots of sailboats and marsh grass on the way. It was so unbelievably hot (and we were so unbelievably not fit to be paddling kayaks) that we only lasted 2 hours, instead of the half day that we had originally signed up for. In spite of our lack of skillz, yo, we had a good time. Except for matthew, who was, apparently, bored.
On our way back from Rock Hall we picked up some crabs so Sarah could give them a whirl. In spite of being terrified of them when they were alive and somewhat disgusted with them dead, she managed to pick apart and eat two of them without getting injured or vomiting. It was cause to call home and celebrate a little with Uncle Mark and Aunt Donna.
Monday we did a jaunt over to DC and saw all of the sights/sites. We took one of those trolley tours where you can get on and off wherever you want for a not-so-low-one-time-price, but thank god for that, because otherwise we would have both died of heatstroke. I actually learned a lot on the tour, and even though I've forgotten it all by now, I was very interested at the time.
And, over the weekend, while Sarah sat all forlorn on a folding chair in the middle of the floor, playing cards on a cardboard box, we finished painting the entire first coat, and vacuumed and cleaned to prepare for the return of bob and seiko.
Wowza! She looks nice, eh?
Posted by ribbu at August 7, 2006 05:58 PM