East Coast Extravaganza- Part 1 - Ocean City Maryland, June 28- July 2, 2022

*****2022 East Coast trip*****

**********Part one********

For our “big” summer trip this year we decided to go to the East Coast and introduce our girls to WASH DC and NYC.

Our first stop was to Ocean Pines MD to see James’ sister Laurie and her family at their beach townhouse.  

Because this is the first summer since the pandemic to be somewhat “normal” there are a lot of issues with airline cancellations and delayed flights due to lack of workers/pilots.  We woke up the morning of our flight to a cancellation/rebooked text message.  

Luckily, our new flight left just a little after our original flight and got in to DCA at our originally scheduled time. And best of all, our flights were on time and had no delays.  

Because we were concerned about making connections and flights being cancelled, we all packed into one carry-on bag and one backpack each (with a couple of dolls -necessary for the NYC part of the trip). And WE DID it!  We considered it “training” for a Europe trip which we hope to do next summer.

We landed at DCA, took an Uber to Pentti’s, and loaded up in their car (they were kind enough to lend us their extra car) and drove 2.5 hours to Ocean Pines arriving at midnight local time.  Super tiring travel day, but we were so grateful it all went smoothly. 

While we were in Maryland we did lots of new things. 

*Ocean Pines is a short drive to Ocean City so we spent a couple of afternoons at the beach 

*The girls learned to paddle board in the canal

*We went to the boardwalk one evening and had treats, played skeeball, and got salt water taffy

*The girls learned how to catch Maryland Blue crab 

Then boil it, pick the meat and make it into crab dip (thanks Kiely!).  

Neither of them really cared for it, but the process was fun. 

*They went on a date with Uncle Brian to McDonalds for breakfast 

*We spent some time at the pool

* On our last night we went to Asseteague National Park after dinner for a beach bonfire and s’mores.

We had a very fun couple of days with our Maryland family.  

Then, on our way back to DC (for part two of our trip) we stopped at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Museum.

….. tbc….