Boats and Rocks in Maryland

The alarm went off too early on Sunday but I still managed some bounce as I leaped out of bed excited to meeting the DCUE group again. Before long I was munching a breakfast sandwich and chatting with the group. We consolidated the cars and set off to Mallow Bay.

There is now a parking lot and ramp to access the water but unfortunately the tide was in and the hulks were barely visible. One of the guys had brought a white water kayak but Emily and I decided to forget the boats and take some photos along the shoreline.

We walked along the path with some of the group and then into a wooded area.

This was a bit creepy lying on the ground. We assumed it came from a kids garden set which had been washed down river with previous floods. We sauntered back to the dock and found Tom and Pat had rigged up a pulley system with the kayak to get across to another beach which would hopefully afford a better view of the hulks. 

Though commendable, it looked like hard work and as the rest of us scratched our heads, a guy called Dave and his boat pulled up and within minutes we were ferried across to the other side with an exchange of phone numbers for our return trip. Awesome!

He was fishing and often comes here so told us we were basically wasting our time hoping to see the hulks, but we wanted to see for ourselves so we hiked along a narrow spit up a steep hill and looked out to a calm Potomac with only an abandoned ferry visible. Oh well, time to look for other photo opportunities.

I took plenty of fungi, feathers, brambles and tress but liked this one of Emily using my broken piece of mirror that I'd picked up from Henryton. We later trekked back the way we'd come and Dave was nearby to take us back across the water again. He was such a nice guy and refused our offer of beer money despite protestations.
We were all pretty hungry by now and the 'beer' word had been uttered so we drove to a tiny country store to pick up food and beers. Andrew, Emily and I pooled our resources and picked up ham, cheese, crackers, chips, beef jerky and what we thought was a 6 pack of Natty Bo beer. We climbed into Andrew's truck and grabbed a can each of.....Schlitz Malt Liqor! We keeled over laughing. What sort of example were us organizers setting to the others by drinking 10% proof beer at lunch time! But we weren't giving it up so down the hatch it went. We shared a can between us in case it was strong or we disliked it but we were pleasantly surprised.
After fueling our bellies, we drove to a nearby abandoned rock quarry. We snuck round the fence and hearing a vehicle nearby, we yelled, 'Into the trees!' I couldn't stop laughing as about 20 people scattered and ducked behind brambles, trees and hedges. We had a hike of about a mile along a sandy path before we hit the gravel and rock hills.

I was elated to see more bluebirds who weren't even slightly perturbed by the sound of shooting from nearby hunters.

The Schlitz came along in our pockets too.

Schrek decided to take a break from hauling all the heavy camera gear he'd rented for the weekend.

Some of the group climbed the gravel mountains while the rest of us sat and took their photos. As we walked back to the cars, we all chatted about what a fun day we'd had. My face and tummy were sore from so much laughter and I fell into bed that evening, apparently with a tick which Billy had to remove from my neck the next morning at work. Yuk!