Touring Havre de Grace Boardwalk, Pandemic Style

June is always a dizzyingly busy month. We have two family birthdays, Father’s Day, and the end of school. For 2019, 2018, 2016, and 2014, we were also in the middle of a big move. So you can imagine, that the children are all completely bewildered at spending June stuck in our own house. Not just stuck in the house, but in the SAME house as last year! What???

Haaaa! The military life has been quite chaotic for us the past few years. I am so thankful to have a summer off from moving.

But I am about done with hanging out in my kitchen with no end in sight. Watching the boys play video games was only fun for about a week, and I have already finished binge watching all my Netflix shows.

So we have found ourselves in need of ADVENTURES!

Well, I have anyway. Alan must be too because he is the one who booked Ocean City for July 4th!

However, we want to do this responsibly. Catching the rona is not our idea of a good time, and we do respect the pandemic. We have our masks. We wear those indoors, and for the most part, we just stick to the outdoors and keep our distance from others. It’s working so far. Maryland coronavirus numbers are down, and that is a good feeling. We aren’t throwing caution to the wind, though, friends. Don’t worry.

Havre de Grace is located in our side of Maryland, and ever since we moved in, I have heard of the boardwalk there. It turned out to be even more pleasant than I expected. We ate outside at a very casual restaurant called the Promenade Grille. Then we took a nice stroll on the boardwalk, stopping to see the wildlife, read the information signs, and take photos as directed by Mom. This mom likes to take a ton of pictures.

Daniel was assigned an entire nine week’s worth of reading a history book about our county.

The book is called Sailing Through Time with the Roberts. Most of that history happened to center around Havre de Grace. It was a long book, and it was read during “distance learning,” so I got to read it right along with Daniel. Each week, we would take turns. He would read a page, I would read a page, all the way through the twenty-plus pages of each chapter. It was the longest, most in depth local history book I have ever read. However, the author kept it somewhat interesting, as it was told through the eyes of a time traveling brother and sister. Their time travel instrument was a model skipjack, perfect for the Chesapeake Bay area.

Since Daniel and I read that historical book, our Havre de Grace boardwalk tour made a lot of sense to us. Several times I said, “Look, Daniel! Like in the book!”

“John O’Neil! Like in the book! Remember, he fought the British single-handedly!?

-hehehe- Daniel spent most of the walk saying, “Yeah. Yes, I remember.”

The boys have only left the house to go to a state park and this board walk excursion since March 13th. I have noticed that in the South many sports have started back up, but that isn’t really the case here. We are still almost always at home. They get to see neighbors, and that’s it.

I definitely felt like the youngest fella had completely forgotten how to behave in public. He has always been spirited and uninhibited, but he was a handful at dinner….a loud handful… I think we need to take him out more often to remind him how to behave. We still had fun though.

So our pandemic-style days out are definitely more solo than usual. Outdoor excursions are my favorite anyway, so this is not a bad deal. However, now that we have begun to get out, we want to do so more and more. Next weekend we are off to Ocean City, but just for one night. I feel like it will be a little harder to keep our distance in a place known for being crowded, and it will be our first hotel stay since the rona. It does make me a touch apprehensive, but we will be careful. I ordered new masks so that we will have enough for this weekend, just in case.

Here is a link to where I order our masks, from my friend Kristina in Tennessee. She does a wonderful job. She puts a nose grip piece on them that helps with fit.

I looked up coronavirus numbers for Maryland today. We are doing so well here. Alabama has three times the number of cases we do here per day, and Maryland has two million more people than Alabama. Florida, of course, is even worse. That is one reason we are sticking to our plan of waiting until August to visit Alabama and Florida. We long to see our family though. Come August we promise to pile up in the car and come visit!! I am just hoping by then the military will be granting leave so that Alan can come with us. We need numbers to go down for that to happen. Stay safe, friends!!