Ah, Spring!

Spring arrived a little late to Delmarva this year. Mother Nature totally ignored the groundhog and it wasn’t until late last week that the daffodils started poking their heads up to meet the sun. There was even a rare (for Delmarva) sighting of Mountain Pink.

Now spring is everywhere. Last Saturday, given that the temps hit 70, I took an extended ride on the Harley.

My nearly two-hour trip took me first to Roxana Road. Once a two-lane blacktop favorite of local speedsters, with all the new development it’s peppered with a Morse Code of stop signs and a couple of traffic lights. Regardless, there are some stretches where one can hit excessive speeds if one chooses. Yesterday I chose to be one and enjoyed the brisk wind in my hair.

Along the way I got the first fresh smells of spring. Hyacinth, a favorite of mine, was first. As I travelled further from town, I was reminded that, besides being a resort community, Sussex County is also very agrarian. This fact hit me like a ton of bricks when I passed farmland that had been freshly tilled and fertilized with chicken sh*t! BTW, Sussex County is also the chicken capital of Delmarva.

I hung a left onto Zion Church Road and zipped past my Loyal Order of Moose lodge.

That’s the thing about Sussex County Delaware. Many of the old roads are named after churches and whatnot. Besides Zion Church, there’s Old Church Cemetery Road, Wilgus Cemetery Road, and Harmony Cemetery Road. So much death.

After the Moose lodge I headed towards Fenwick Island, which isn’t an island at all.

Route One in Delaware runs from near Wilmington, through Rehoboth, Dewey and Bethany Beaches, and finally through Fenwick Island before hitting the Maryland border and into Ocean City. I turned left at Fenwick and headed north.

Fenwick Island is a quiet little town with, I think, two police cars. It’s pretty laid back, but, like a lot of these little beach communities, they take their speed limit serious. Thirty-five in town. Oh, and they don’t like a lot of noise either. I must say it’s hard to keep the Harley slow and quiet but I do.

Heading north past Fenwick Island State Park, I entered the town of Bethany Beach and said “howdy” to the red cedar totem of the Nanticoke Indian Chief Little Owl that welcomes visitors.

Just north of Bethany Beach is the Indian River Bay. The bay is one of the three “inland bays” of Delaware. The Indian River Bridge takes Route One over the Indian River Inlet that joins the Indian River Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.

The bridge is a very distinctive landmark of Bethany Beach and all the Delaware beaches. The north side of the highway enters the Delaware Seashore State Park with its six miles of public beaches, some of which allow you to drive on.

The ride through the park was easy. But what was really different this day was something quite unusual for this area. I could smell the ocean! You might think “so what?” but unlike the Jersey Shore that has marshes between the mainland and the barrier islands where seaweed and such dry out to create that distinctive odor, the beaches near me have no such thing.

The smell of the ocean was the highlight of my day.

Returning home I noticed that the forsythias had magically bloomed their springtime yellow during my two-hour jaunt.

Spring exploded all around me.