Delaware – State #37

Delaware gets its name from the first governor of Virginia: so and so De La War. I bet you didn’t know that! We wanted to stop by Lewes, the first city in the first state, but we missed the turn and kept on moving. Surprisingly enough Delaware isn’t as tiny as Rhode Island. It’s long and it takes an even longer time to get there. We were headed to beaches

in the South, and they were over 2 hours away! Friend told me that Rehoboth is where people go so I was excited to find that our point of interest was near there: the Indian River Life Saving Station.

While I love the ocean, I have a genuine fear of the water. This conveniently feeds into my fascination with shipwrecks, which equals my infatuation with anything Coast Guard. Coincidentally, my birthday is on the anniversary of the Titanic sinking.

Well, the Surfmen at these life saving stations were the original bad asses. Grandma just finished a book about these men down in the Carolinas and learned a lot.

Delaware has a treacherous coastline and ships were continually slamming into shore. The government created a rescue plan. Every 7 miles up the coast were rescue stations. The men were well trained; the beach was patrolled 24/7 searching for anyone in trouble. When they were needed, they had to haul their boat out of the rescue station, up over the sand dunes and out to sea. Having walked these grounds and seen the dangerous coast, I’m pretty impressed with this feat alone. Never mind the equipment they had to work with!

A groovy idea came to someone and they started shooting out hooked cables from a cannon toward the ships. It’d catch somewhere and enable people to slide down the cables toward shore. Kind of like a rescue Zip line across the water.

We toured the 2 story station and then walked the short path over the sand dunes to the beach. Doodle got 2 splinters; this place reminded me more of White Sands (see New Mexico post) than a typical beach. The surf was hungry. It wanted Doodle especially, but I made the kids stay near the dunes. Poor things, I never even let them get their feet wet! The wind was so powerful; we could truly imagine screaming, drowning people out there. Anyway, with all this rough ocean, desert plants and course people, we felt accutely that Delaware was no place like home.