Who ever heard of
Pocomoke? And Jacob that is not Pokemon...We are in
Pocomoke Maryland tonight, a little town not too far from the Atlantic coast and, logically enough, right on the
Pocomoke River. I'm trying to say
Pocomoke as often as I can because I think it is such a neat name for a town. New York,
Lawrencville, Chicago - what prosaic words for a town name. But
Pocomoke - you tell people you are from
Pocomoke and they have to sit up and take notice. The light house photo will give you some idea of this little town - it is the view we had from the little balcony on our hotel room last night...note those ominous looking clouds coming in.
We got a nice sleep in this morning. Instead of leaving at our usual 7:30 we left at 8:45. A day off yesterday and a sleep in this morning - it just doesn't get any better than that. And I thought the late start was because we were doing only 51 miles but it turned out I had not read the cue sheet correctly - we actually had 65 miles and much of it into a head wind. We had heavy duty thunder and lightning storms last night but when we got up this morning the sun was out and the streets were dry - reason to cheer. Along with the rain last night however, it did turn cooler and for the first time we all had long sleeves and some even went for jackets. But even with the cooler temperatures the sun stayed out and we actually had a full day without a single raindrop. We worked our way down Rt 1 from Dewey Beach through a couple of small towns, crossing a bridge or two, and through miles of beach houses condos and eventually came into Ocean City. Even in the off season it is a busy town, lots of traffic and people going out for breakfast on a Saturday morning. The main drag is all multi-story
condo's on the beach side and tourist "stuff" on the other side of the street. I do not think I have ever seen so many miniature golf courses in my life - every tourist in town must be forced to play miniature golf at least daily as condition to being allowed to rent a unit in town. We officially crossed into Maryland in the middle of Ocean City and, of course, we all had to stop and take the required photo of the state welcome sign at the border. I added a picture of one of the 9,473 miniature golf courses just so you could get the idea. We left Ocean City crossing another bridge over the bay and headed inland. We first came into several miles of farmland and in a way it was like Warren County New Jersey - all corn and soybeans and much of it already harvested. A couple more turns and two or three more small towns and we came into a long stretch of mostly pine forest that went on almost until we got to
Pocomoke (see how much I like saying that word?). The roads were flat for the most part so even though we ran into some headwinds we made pretty good time and just enjoyed spinning. We only had about 1300 feet of climbing today according to my
Garmin and I think a good part of that was just the climbing involve in going up and over several bridges.
Tomorrow we head for Virginia and will cross the
Chesapeake Bay. It is a 20 mile crossing via the Chesapeake Bridge/tunnel and since bikes are not allowed we will be shuttled across in our support vehicles. And with the sun coming up a little later these days they have changed our getaway time to 7:45. I guess that means 15 extra minutes of sleep time, what a deal.
And a final statement for today...for all who may be interested Champ assured me tonight that in fact he knows that it is the Atlantic Ocean on his left.
Who ever heard of Pocomoke? And Jacob that is not Pokemon...We are in Pocomoke Maryland tonight, a little town not too far from the Atlantic coast and, logically enough, right on the Pocomoke River. I'm trying to say Pocomoke as often as I can because I think it is such a neat name for a town. New York, Lawrencville, Chicago - what prosaic words for a town name. But Pocomoke - you tell people you are from Pocomoke and they have to sit up and take notice. The light house photo will give you some idea of this little town - it is the view we had from the little balcony on our hotel room last night...note those ominous looking clouds coming in.
We got a nice sleep in this morning. Instead of leaving at our usual 7:30 we left at 8:45. A day off yesterday and a sleep in this morning - it just doesn't get any better than that. And I thought the late start was because we were doing only 51 miles but it turned out I had not read the cue sheet correctly - we actually had 65 miles and much of it into a head wind. We had heavy duty thunder and lightning storms last night but when we got up this morning the sun was out and the streets were dry - reason to cheer. Along with the rain last night however, it did turn cooler and for the first time we all had long sleeves and some even went for jackets. But even with the cooler temperatures the sun stayed out and we actually had a full day without a single raindrop. We worked our way down Rt 1 from Dewey Beach through a couple of small towns, crossing a bridge or two, and through miles of beach houses condos and eventually came into Ocean City. Even in the off season it is a busy town, lots of traffic and people going out for breakfast on a Saturday morning. The main drag is all multi-story condo's on the beach side and tourist "stuff" on the other side of the street. I do not think I have ever seen so many miniature golf courses in my life - every tourist in town must be forced to play miniature golf at least daily as condition to being allowed to rent a unit in town. We officially crossed into Maryland in the middle of Ocean City and, of course, we all had to stop and take the required photo of the state welcome sign at the border. I added a picture of one of the 9,473 miniature golf courses just so you could get the idea. We left Ocean City crossing another bridge over the bay and headed inland. We first came into several miles of farmland and in a way it was like Warren County New Jersey - all corn and soybeans and much of it already harvested. A couple more turns and two or three more small towns and we came into a long stretch of mostly pine forest that went on almost until we got to Pocomoke (see how much I like saying that word?). The roads were flat for the most part so even though we ran into some headwinds we made pretty good time and just enjoyed spinning. We only had about 1300 feet of climbing today according to my Garmin and I think a good part of that was just the climbing involve in going up and over several bridges.
Tomorrow we head for Virginia and will cross the Chesapeake Bay. It is a 20 mile crossing via the Chesapeake Bridge/tunnel and since bikes are not allowed we will be shuttled across in our support vehicles. And with the sun coming up a little later these days they have changed our getaway time to 7:45. I guess that means 15 extra minutes of sleep time, what a deal.
And a final statement for today...for all who may be interested Champ assured me tonight that in fact he knows that it is the Atlantic Ocean on his left.
Looks like Houghton Lake has NOTHING on Pokomoke in terms of miniature golf joints per capita!
ReplyDelete