Back From Vacation

We just returned from a week-long vacation at Frontier Town campground in Ocean City Maryland.  Unfortunately, Andrew wasn’t able to come with us this year – he opted to attend a baseball camp instead to help him get ready for the high school baseball team next year.

We had a great time camping, but why do I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation?

Is this how you feel as you get older?  Or is it just that I try to cram so much into each vacation that by the time I get home I’m exhausted and just want to vegetate in front of the TV for a day or two?

But I’m here in front of the computer for now and thought I’d post a few photos from our trip…let’s see – we tried our hand at crabbing from the pier inside the campground:

We used some crab nets that I found at a yard sale last fall.  We did catch some crabs…two were too small and one escaped from the net and did a very funny sideways walk across the width of the dock (right back into the water).

After not having much luck at the crabbing pier, we gave up and left our nets with the Raup family (who just happened to be camping at the same campground last week too).  The Raup girls managed to catch almost a dozen crabs!  Not being big crab fans, they left them at our campsite in a bucket of water for us to eat…

Meanwhile, we spent the rest of the day at the beach on Assateague Island trying to convince our two goldendoodles that they are indeed ‘water dogs’:

They weren’t buying it.  It was like a scene from the TV show, The Monkees – whenever a wave came up to the dogs, they scrambled away from the water as quickly as they could.  But for a little excitement, they did manage to escape from their leashes and ran down the beach at one point, kicking sand on everyone as they went.  Luckily, Matt was able to catch them as they paused to wrestle in the soft sand (no, they still didn’t go anywhere NEAR the water).

And speaking of dogs, the reason that we took them to the beach with us is that the previous day, Geddy proceeded to get sick in the camper while we were out.  And I mean SICK.  On every single piece of upholstery in the camper.   I was absolutely in tears cleaning up after him while Mike went out and bought a steam cleaner and mop.  Before our trip, I went over the entire camper with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser (LOVE those things!) to get rid of little marks here and there – I was so proud of how clean the camper was.  As I was cleaning up after the dog, I kept thinking to myself, “What a waste of time THAT was!”

Anyway…by the time we returned to our campsite and found the crabs that the Raups had left for us, the crabs were no longer moving.  I shook the bucket.  No movement.  I picked one up by his big blue claw.  No movement.  Apparently, the crabs had died while waiting for our return!  Frantically, I called the campground store and asked if it was safe to cook dead crabs – all I could think of was the delicious dinner that was in jeopardy!  But it seems that is it not safe to cook and eat crabs that are already dead.  What a waste…we had to have our originally planned hamburgers instead.

We also visited the Frontier Town western theme park while we were there – something we’ve never done before.

We watched gunfight re-enactments (which the kids weren’t crazy about), the kids panned for gold, we rode in paddleboats, Emily went on a pony ride and we also watched some traditional Indian dances – Emily got up and danced with them onstage – hers was more of an Irish jig than a Native American dance, but it was still fun to watch:

Matt also learned to shoot a bow and arrow – he was surprisingly accurate:

We also went on a stagecoach ride:

During which we were ‘robbed’ by some bandits…again, as you can see by the look on Emily’s face in this photo, she wasn’t crazy about the whole thing…

After that, she refused to go on the train ride since rumor had it that there may be some bandits there too…

But all-in-all, we had a great time – in spite of the dog illness, stagecoach robbery and even the dead crabs.

We’ve been to this campground twice before and it’s still one of our favorites.  In fact, while we were there, we made reservations to go back again next year.

Oh – and we also wandered over to the Ocean City boardwalk on our last day.  It was HOT – 100 degrees – and we were looking for any place that was air conditioned.  We came upon the Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum and paid it a visit:

Boy, is that a bizarre place!  Here’s Mike and Matt next to a replica of the world’s tallest man:

They advertise the museum as “fun for the whole family”…and it was interesting enough…once we got past the room with the shrunken head, torture implements and photos of an actual beheading!  Not sure if that is actually fun for the whole family…

We managed to divert the kids’ attention until we got to the more appropriate optical illusions and other weird – but less gruesome – stuff.

Hopefully, my kids aren’t scarred for life after being ‘robbed’ at gunpoint, seeing a bucket full of dead crabs and viewing (albeit quickly) an actual shrunken human head…just another typical Torrence family camping trip for ya’!