Assateague Island Sunset and Moonrise
Assateague Island Sunset & Moonrise
On a rainy and blustery winter Saturday, the CORE 4x4 club organized a first of the year beach run to Assateague Island OSV (over sand vehicle). The goal every year is to get out early onto the OSV early in the year, before the crowds come out. The OSV has a vehicle limit of 145 vehicles on the 12 mile stretch of drivable beach at any time. Later in the year, when it’s warmer, it hits that limit by 7am some days, so there’s a big benefit to getting onto the beach, and enjoying the fresh ocean air, even when it’s a bit too cold to actually get into the water!
This time around, we loaded the kids up and decided to tackle this trip as a family. The club’s plan was to meet at 11am, be on the sand by 11:30, drive to the border, have lunch, and then head back, with a projected wrap up time of around 4pm.
We had some additional plans though! After checking out the moon and sunrise/sunset calendars, we saw that that day was a maximum full moon night, with the moon rising off of the ocean around 6:30pm. The sunset was also scheduled to happen around 6:20pm, so we planned to stay later after the club group ride, set up camp on the beach, get a campfire going, and cook dinner while we wait for the show!
We made our way onto the sand, which was pleasantly hard packed due to the cold and the rain. This made for pretty easy going down the beach.
Turns out, that was a bit of an ambitious plan, as the kids were having a bit of trouble with the cold and the long day. So by the end of lunch, we were hesitating on our plans. We were thinking of wrapping after lunch, and just heading home. After packing up, taking off Kiran’s sandals to clean his sandy feet (this is important as we’ll find out), we started to head back, doing our standard check in across the dunes at the two permissible pass throughs to check out the bayside.
Getting into the last northernmost passthrough, we had a problem. One of the new guests joining us had a problem with the 4WD in his Jeep WJ. The soft boggy sand near the entrance to the passthrough was too much for just 2WD, and he went down. Fortunately we were not far from the exit, so with Andrew from HobbyTrap recovery strapped to the WJ, we all made it off the beach safely!
After leaving the beach with the group, a set of us decided to go back out, and do the entire run again. At the last passthrough, we realized that we had lost Kiran’s sandals! I am pretty sure I put them on one of my rear tires while putting Kiran in his carseat, forgetting to put his sandals back into the Jeep. So going back to the border gave us a chance to see if we could find them. We didn’t NEED to go all the way back to get them, but why turn down an opportunity to do another run!
After running back down, we got to the border, and let the kids out to get some more beach time. Being a club run, the focus is on driving obviously, which while super fun, can be a strain on the kids. They much prefer we park up in a spot and just let them run free! We never found Kiran’s sandals there though, so we more or less gave up hope in finding them.
Driving back, Andrew’s eagle eyes spotted Kiran’s sandals washing up on shore probably a half mile from the border! We were blown away!
Credit to Cherie from HobbyTrap for the celebration photo
With the delays and finding the sandals, we were pushing up against the sunset time, which we had originally given up on doing, given that the kids were getting pretty fussy with the long day in the vehicle, and the complete dissolution of their normal feeding schedule. But with sunset so tantalizingly close, we decided one more stop to try and capture it.
We had mostly given up on the moonrise, because of the heavy cloud cover on the horizon. We were treated to a nice sunset over the bay. Conditions were ok, with the cloud cover from the rainy overcast day not quite in the right place to be underlit by the sun for the typical dazzling colorful sunset we were hoping for, but it was still pretty.
To our surprise, however, the moon did make an appearance! And pretty much at the exact time as sunset over the bay! So, we were surrounded by the orange glow of sunset from the west, and the orange glow of the rising moon to the east! Once again, the cloud cover was working against us a bit, giving us only a momentary glimpse of the moon rising, but it was still beautiful.
All in all, it was a very fun day, and the moonrise/sunset was absolutely worth the wait! We will definitely try to make it out again under better weather conditions next time
Check out the Gallery for more pictures!
