Rehoboth Beach, DE ~ Part 3 ~ Some Day Trips

In my continuing saga of the 2008 Family Beach week at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, I have decided to write about a couple of little excursions we went on. The first being Cape Henlopen State Park.

Cape Henlopen State Park is in nearby Lewes, Delaware at the mouth of the Delaware Bay. It was just a short drive away. We drove over by ourselves, my parents met up with us a little later, and my brother Jerry biked over. There is a lot to see and do at Cape Henlopen, it's hard for me to know where to start. I guess I'll start where we did, at a World War II Observation Tower. Several of these towers were built along the coast during WWII to spot enemy ships. We were able to climb up one. There was a great view from the top, you could see out in all directions.

View from the Observation Tower. You can see another tower in the upper right of this picture.

Next we headed over the the Seaside Nature Center. Here there is a bike shed where you can borrow (i.e. FREE) a bike for a couple of hours to explore the park. There are also several fish tank exhibits inside. Lillian was fascinated watching the fish up close. From here we were off to do a little geocaching. This was the first time geocaching for my parents and brother, I think they enjoyed it. We had to walk through the frisbee golf course to find our treasure, so if you like frisbee golf, you could do that here too! Of course you can also go to the beach here as well. There is a beautiful bathhouse but the beach was quite crowded. We just took a look, for we were off to the old Fort Miles (another WWII area) and to climb up the 80 foot dune. This is the highest dune between Cape Hatteras and Cape Cod. There was a paved walkway along the Great Dune area so it was not hard to do with the stroller.

The guys with our geocaching find.

The view of Fort Miles from the Observation Tower.

The view while walking on the Great Dune.

Another little trip we took was to Nassau Valley Vineyards. This is Delaware's first farm winery. A farm winery is where the grapes are grown, wine produced, and wine sold, all at the same location. The winery had a self-guided tour which was not a tour so much as an exhibit, but it was an interesting look at the beginnings of this particular winery as well as some history on wine making. At the end of the exhibit, there was a tasting room and of course we had our tastings and bought a couple of bottles to enjoy later. As you can see from the photos, they have very picturesque grounds.

Next time, I'll give some restaurant reviews. You can read my earlier posts on our Rehoboth Beach trip: Family Fun at the Beach and Letterboxing.

Rehoboth Beach, DE ~ Part 2 ~ Letterboxing

Letterboxing is a hobby which combines navigational skills with rubber stamp artistry in an outdoor "treasure hunt" style quest. The quest is similar to that of geocaching, but how you get there and what you find are different.

To get started you will need your own personal rubber stamp, an ink pad, a log book, maybe a compass, definitely a sense of direction, and the "clues" to a letterbox. Once you find the letterbox you seek, you will find inside a rubber stamp for you to stamp in your log book and a log book for you to stamp with your personal stamp. Many people carve their own rubber stamps and the hidden stamps often correspond with something about the locale.

My brother David first told us about Letterboxing early in the summer when we talked about going geocaching while on vacation. So we looked to see if there were any where we were going to be and printed out the clue descriptions before we left. We should have taken more time to read through the descriptions and plot out where exactly they were because that was difficult to do without internet access and without a intimate knowledge of the local area. But we managed and have two adventures to our credit.

Our first adventure was a small party of myself, John, Lillian, my brother David, and his son Vincent. Vincent and Lillian are twin cousins, they were born the same day.

Here are the clues:

Turtle Hunting in Silver Lake
From downtown Rehoboth, 2nd Avenue heading South turns into Bayard Avenue. About 1/2 mile from downtown, you'll come to the white bridge over Silver Lake. From the bridge we've seen many a turtle, fish galore, even an occasional nutria. As you start along the western shore of Silver Lake, you'll see the Waterfowl Refuge sign - 'ware their leavings! At the asphalt pullover, there's a 3-sided evergreen hedge hiding the water treatment equipment. Standing with your back to the lake, in the central 3-sided hedge, locate the shrubbery at the right forefront. At about 5' high, there's a microbox velcro-strapped into the branches.

Luckily, I had remembered seeing the sign for Silver Lake on our way to the beach. So we knew right where it was, although the directions would suffice as well. When we arrived to the pullover, I stayed with the babies, while John and David went for the search. It only took a few minutes for them to find the container velcro strapped in the bushes. The stamp was of a turtle.

There was a second letterbox close by, so John stayed with the babies, while David and I went on the search. It was a little more walking then we first thought, but not too far. We passed many wild areas and docks!

Here are the clues:

Silver Lake Cat-tails
Coming south on Bayard Avenue from downtown Rehoboth, cross over the white Silver Lake Bridge.

Stop by the Turtle Hunting letterbox and continue along the lake's edge from there.
Walk past: a small grove of trees, and then a dock.
Pass another grove fronting an overgrown bit of the lake's edge.
There, a retaining wall starts with a dock about half way along it.
There's another wild area, another dock, and then the LAST wild area.
At the fire hydrant, head down to the lone tall pine.
There, take a 160 bearing and walk 14 paces to the low pine branch extending from the underbrush.
The letterbox is pushed rather far in and covered by a pile of pine cones - a pine cairn? - it's easiest to sit down in the grass and reach in.

This stamp was of Cat-tails and had it's own ink pad. Both of the logbooks had many stamps from visitors all around the country. Looking through the log is very interesting in itself.

Not all Letterboxing adventures are victorious. After these two quick finds, we decided to try one that was a series of ten, based in town. Here are the clues:

Delaware is known as the Blue Hen State because this nickname was given to Delaware after the fighting Blue Hen Cocks that were carried with the Delaware Revolutionary War Soldiers for entertainment during Cockfights. One of the oldest hotels along the boardwalk is the Henlopen. Go to the traffic island filled with pines and a piling structured fountain – probably not working. There is a bench upon which to rest and revel in the fun of Letterboxing. As you face the Atlantic Ocean spot the 3rd pine tree on left. On the side facing the 4th tree there is a bird nest on the lowest main branch. If no one is home, remove the micro box velcro strapped to limb.

This is where some prior planning would have come in handy. We just parked and had to walk the boardwalk until we came to the Henlopen, the last hotel on the boardwalk. Then we found the parking island the clues talked about. But the 3rd pine on the left? Left of what? We looked in all the trees we thought it could mean. We found a bird's nest, but it didn't seem to correspond to the clues correctly. Well, we searched and searched - every pine, but we never found this one. Not every search is a success.

Our next Letterboxing adventure was a lucky, spur of the moment, it's good to be prepared, type of outing. We had two carloads of adults and kids headed down to the Fenwick Island Lighthouse one morning. On the way I saw a sign for James Farm Ecological Preserve. I recognized it as the location for a couple of Letterboxes that we had printed out. This was good because after the long (to a child) ride to the lighthouse, there wasn't that much to do there (it was closed). So we needed an activity for the kids - fast, so off the the Ecological Preserve. This was a neat little sanctuary area that had trails through different types of terrain and a couple of observation platforms. The four year olds had a great time looking for the "clues" (some which we made up for them to find once we knew we were on the right path). And when we got to the hidden box, they each got a hand stamp! That was very exciting. There were two Letterboxes here, the second one John found first and hid some little prizes for the kids, so they had something to keep. This was a lot of fun for everyone and we never would have stopped if it hadn't been for the Letterboxes.

Raspberry and Honeysuckle Memories

We have raspberry canes behind our house. These just grow wild, but we never seemed to pick any before the birds got to them. This year some raspberry canes started growing over by the gardens and were loaded with berries. So, as they started to ripen, I would pick them everyday. Each day would yield a handful of berries, which I would collect and we would have in yogurt or over cereal. Whatever was left over went in the refrigerator to save up for making something big. Finally I had enough saved and I made raspberry muffins. They were delicious. The recipe I used is at the end of this post.

Our honeysuckle is in bloom right now and always a-buzzing with bees. It smells just like summertime to me.

Picking raspberries and smelling honeysuckle triggered some childhood memories for me. I grew up on a dairy farm in eastern Pennsylvania with my seven brothers and sisters. Once we were into summer vacation we would spend the days rambling about the fields and in the woods. When the raspberries were ready for picking we would go trekking through the fields to the berry bushes which grew along the edges and where the fields couldn't be cultivated. It was great fun and we would be gone for hours, picking and eating berries.

Sometimes we would walk over to my Grandparents house, which we called The Farm because it was the main part of the dairy farm. It was 1 1/2 miles from our house. These were just country roads and they didn't have very much traffic at all. The honeysuckle grew wild all along them and we would stop and pick the flowers and pull the bottom off and get a sweet drop of nectar from each flower, to drop on our tongue.

I hadn't thought about those days for years. It's funny how doing something or a smell or a song can really take you back through the years. The brain is an amazing thing, how it stores memories and how they are triggered back to our consciousness.

Well, so much for my walk down memory lane. Here is the recipe I used for the Raspberry Muffins. It worked out well because I had just over a cup of berries.

Raspberry Cream Muffins
from allrecipes.com
Submitted by Stephanie Moon

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup fresh raspberries
14 Tablespoons sugar, divided
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup half-and-half cream
1 cup finely chopped vanilla or white chips
2 Tablespoons brown sugar

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a small bowl, toss raspberries with 1/4 cup of sugar; set aside. In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and 1/2 cup sugar. Beat in the egg and extracts. Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with cream. Stir in chips and reserved raspberries.

2. Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups three-fourths full. Combine brown sugar and remaining sugar; sprinkle over batter. Bake at 375 degrees F for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack. Serve warm.

Here's a picture of how mine turned out. I didn't put the sugar/brown sugar on top. I didn't want them to be too sweet. And I only used 1/2 cup of white chocolate chopped up in them because that's all I had.

It's Time to go to the Fair!

I love the end of June / beginning of July, not because it means my birthday is coming, but because it's time for The Big Butler Fair. It's always over the 4th of July and sometimes is still going on when my birthday rolls around and I get to go then. But this year it will be over before my birthday so we went Tuesday night. The Big Butler Fair, yes that is how everyone refers to it, is your typical, rural, country fair. It has animals, fair food, rides galore, and nightly entertainment. The entertainment ranges from Demolition Derby, to Truck Pulls, to an all day Country music concert on the last Saturday. I used to live only a few miles from the fairgrounds which is when I started going every year. Even after I moved farther away, I would always go back. This year was extra fun as we took Lillian for the first time. After she acclimated to the environment, she had a good time. The one disappointment was that they did not show rabbits this year. There were a couple in the petting farm area though. Another annual favorite is watching the peep incubator. Every day there are peeps being hatched.

Of course, after seeing all the animals, we had to get some fair food. But what to have, there are so many choices. Of course, you have to have several things since the fair comes but once a year. We had pizza, gyros, cheese steak subs, corn dogs, pierogies, and ribbon fries. We've found the pizza and gyros from "John the Greek" to be the best. Not all at once, mind you. And of course you can't leave without having some fried dough. That's a total fair experience.

We don't ride the rides. Just watching some of the rides makes me queasy. If we rode the rides I wouldn't be able to eat all that food. Of course I know that someday I will be riding those rides with the little one, but the kiddie rides looked doable.

There are also exhibits throughout the fairgrounds. The Butler County Tourism office had a tent with various exhibits about what there is to do in Butler County. There was even a table from a local winery providing wine tastings (4 for $1). Since we enjoy visiting local wineries we stopped and sampled. We didn't purchase any but we will go back to the actual winery sometime to pick some up and sample some more.

It was such a fun time and a beautiful night as well, I didn't want it to end. It was the first night in a while that it wasn't raining. Perfect temperature, no humidity, you couldn't ask for more. Here are some photos from the evening.