To Dewey Beach, 2023

I love the ocean and I'd always thought of it as a bright, sunny place to be.  This time, I saw another view of the ocean.

To get to Dewey Beach, Delaware, last week, we drove through cloudy, rainy, cool Ohio, the Appalachians of West Virginia and Pennsylvania, then through Maryland, and into Delaware.  I love that drive.  When we arrived at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge I thought to myself, we're almost there!, forgetting that the ocean was still two hours away.  About an hour later, we saw this "Beaches" sign.  It always makes me chuckle with its collective, non-definitive noun.  The coastline is filled with beaches in both directions!  We only about an hour away!

We knew there was a great possibility that we wouldn't have bright, beautiful, sunny days at the beach this year.  Ophelia had just bypassed Dewey a few days before.  But looking at my phone's weather app and seeing how often it changed from rainy to partly cloudy or partly sunny, I was hopeful that the rain and clouds would be on their way out by the time we arrived.
Not only was it grey and cloudy, it was also rainy, windy--17 to 22 miles/hour winds--and cool--in the mid-60s.  The weather app also told me that there was a flood watch which soon became a flood warning.  Our hotel was on the beach (with an ocean view room).  Should we be concerned?  I asked several people about it and they said it wasn't a big deal.  The hotel's receptionist told us that the water probably wouldn't get to the dune.  If you enlarge the photo above, you'll see a fence just in front of the dune on the ocean-side.  The waves reached that fence but no higher.  I was surprised that the water continued to rise even after high tide had been reached. 

On Tuesday we walked on the beach with a temperature that felt colder because of the wind.

We walked the beach for half a mile or so, then gave up fighting the wind and went back inside.  What does one do on a cool, grey, windy day in October when at the beach?  We headed to the state park's bay-side marina where we found hundreds of boats tethered to dock after dock.  Such a lot of boats!  It was not as windy there.

Next, we went to a small section of a state park where the path meandered through a forest then into a marsh area where we saw tiny fiddler crabs busy hunting for food, or doing whatever crabs do.  It was a wonderful walk, also warmer and less windy away from the ocean, and the rain held off.

On Wednesday we saw a glint of the predicted sun around 9 a.m.
By 10 the clouds had thinned a little giving space for the sun to shine through.

Then clouds returned....
until the weather changed again.  It was still cool and windy but it was wonderful to see sun and blue skies.

We came home a day early:  Thursday was predicted to be as dark, grey, and cloudy as Monday and Tuesday.

I love the ocean no matter the weather.  This was the first time seeing it look grey, with a grey sky above.  I always wondered if the ocean picks up some of its color by reflecting the sky.  Blue sky, blue ocean.  Grey sky, grey ocean.  True or not, it seemed to be accurate this time.  As much as I love the ocean I'm disappointed that the few days we were there weren't sunny and a little warmer.  Had we been there a month, last week's few days would've been a pleasant change and I would have been thrilled to see them.  I'm glad to have seen them this time, and pleased we had part of a day with so much sun, but I'm looking forward to another ocean visit which I hope will be really sunny.

This week the Dewey Beach weather has been perfect!  I'm so happy for the people who are there now.

I'm returning to quilting activities now.  I finished last week's Scrappy Stars but haven't photographed them yet.

--Nancy.