Ok. We’re back! Sorry for the hiatus, but we had limited time and limited WiFi (we don’t trust hotel WiFi). We’re going to try to give you an update from my phone. Here we go:

Just one more thing about Captain Zack’s, we miss it! If you ever get a chance to go to Chincoteague, you must stop here. Heck, if you are within a 100 mile radius, you must go to Captain Zack’s. We don’t like to judge people, but if you don’t stop here, you will tempt us to judge bigtime.

After eating lunch, we stopped for putt putt, a J&A Experience tradition. Justine called it “mini-golf” and I had to remind her that Marylanders don’t know what that is.

We played two rounds. I won the first by 7 strokes and Justine won the second by 2 strokes. I’ll admit that Justine won on the harder course. She also got three hole-in-ones.

It was definitely a quality course. It was a good balance of difficult and fun, enough to be competitive and have a good time.

After golf, we decided to drive around the island for one last look around. It’s a good thing we did because if we hadn’t, Justine wouldn’t have been able to get a few of these:

After dropping $7.50 on 5 conch shells (what!!), we drove back to Ocean City. Our goal was to find a place to eat dinner and get TCBY, then go back to the hotel. This plan was perfectly executed. We found this great place in West Ocean City (more to come on West OC) called the Shark on the Harbor. It serves organic and local food. All of the meat is grass-fed or pasture-raised. We ordered two appetizers, the Steer and Spuds (steak strips and freshly made potato chips) and The Harbor Steam Pot (steamed crawfish, mussels, clams, and shrimp).

Here was our view from the table.

An of course, we ended the night with TCBY.

Yesterday was jam packed with everything we love about our vacations, driving, national parks, food, and more food.

The day started off with trying to find a place to eat breakfast. Not much luck here. Although there are places to eat, it’s like the pancakes and waffles type. Don’t get us wrong, here. We love pancakes and waffles. But, we consider them a treat and try to only eat the homemade ones from friends and family (or our own). Anyway, we ended up going to a Starbucks and getting their egg sandwiches and wraps, along with a couple juice drinks.

Once we finished our breakfast, we began our journey to Chincoteague Island, Virginia.

This is on the bridge that leads to Chincoteague.

As some of you midwesterners might not know, Chincoteague is an island that is attached to Assateague Island, home of wild ponies. It’s believed that ponies from a Spanish shipwreck swam ashore to Assateague and mixed with local horses. These ponies that are on Assateague have been wild for hundreds of years. Each year, there is a pony swim, where the local firemen from Chincoteague ride on to Assateague and herd some ponies back to Chincoteague to be sold. The earnings go to the local fire department and the ponies that are not purchased are sent back to Assateague Island.

We weren’t able to watch the annual pony swim since that is in July. But, we drove on to Assateague Island and visited the National Wildlife Refuge. We walked a few of the trails in an effort to see the ponies.

For the first hour or two, we only saw evidence of the ponies:

Pony Evidence

This is as close as we could get once we actually saw some ponies. Look real hard and you might see them.

Look harder.

Once we got a good look at the ponies, we kept walking the trails. We found that there was a lighthouse built on the island due to the many shipwrecks. We couldn’t go into the lighthouse, since it is undergoing major renovations. It turns out that this lighthouse is among many historic lighthouses in the country, along with the one on St. Simon’s Island, GA.

We were getting hungry after all of this walking and decided to drive back to Chincoteague for some food. Luckily, we found this awesome place called Captain Zack’s. They serve seafood carryout and it is all very fresh. You walk into the building and there is a big refrigerator with crabs, oysters, you name it, on ice. Once we ordered our meals (Justine ordered the steamed jumbo shrimp and I ordered the crabcakes, more on that later) the woman took the seafood off of the ice and the ingredients out of the fridge and began preparing the meals. Now that’s fresh.

Here’s a picture of our food. Some of the best crabcakes and shrimp we’ve had yet.

That’s only half of our day so far. Like I said, it was jam-packed. We will get back with post about the second half, later. Now, we are off for another adventure.

We know, we know. Founding Farmers again? YES. And if we could, we would have done it again, another time!

No words could convince you more than these pictures:

Justine got the Founding Farmer’s Breakfast with Sausage

Aaron got the Sausage, Mushroom and Spinach Pan Scramble

Best vacation breakfast. Period.

So, after downing that amazing food, we headed to Annapolis. About two years ago, we went to Annapolis and loved it. We love the historic buildings, the bay, the restaurants, the shops, and the dogs.

This is the historic Shiplap House, one of the oldest surviving homes in Annapolis. Annapolis is also a very dog friendly village. We walked throughout the downtown area and counted 30+ dogs. We even saw a Great Dane American Bulldog mix. It was like seeing what would happen if Moses and Sadie had puppies.

We made sure to have some more crabcakes at the Middleton Tavern before we left. Then, we were off to Ocean City. This part of the trip really gets interesting since we are now going to a place in Maryland where I had never gone before. Although I grew up for most of my life in Maryland, I never went to Ocean City or the Eastern Shore for that matter (not counting Delaware, who does anyway).

From Annapolis, you need to go over this bridge:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After holding our breath for a very long time, we ended up on the eastern MD and on our way to the beach. Nothing too eventful on this side of Maryland.

A couple hours later, we were in Ocean City. Here’s our view from the hotel:

Partial Ocean View

We headed out for dinner and found a place that was always popular among my friends, Bull on the Beach. Anyway, it just wasn’t good. We rate restaurants on their food quality and care less about ambiance. I’m sure this place is popular for its creative name and pretty sweet t-shirts. Check out the menus:

Bull on the Beach Menu

The problem is that the quality of food was not worth the prices we paid. Justine had the fried shrimp and I got the crab cakes. We also got baked potatoes as sides. We will not be going back, just not worth our money.

Our disappointment subsided immediately when we found a TCBY down the street. TCBY is Justine’s favorite frozen yogurt place ever. It brings back a lot of fond memories from her childhood vacations in St. Simons, GA. Unfortunately, the TCBY in St. Simons recently closed down. This is the first one we’ve seen in a long time.

Also, it was an awesome surprise to see that TCBY has now gone to the self-serve model. Don’t worry, we will be going back. Count on it.

Not too much to report for Tuesday. Part of the reason we took this trip to Maryland is that Justine had to come out for her job (this might explain why we are in Rockville). For Tuesday, she had a department-wide summit to attend. And it was scheduled for the whole day. So, I was on my own.

The day involved Starbucks coffee, food, a nap, and more food.

One thing I would like to warn everyone about is that the Starbucks app is terrible in Rockville. Not one Starbucks is where it should be according to the app. After the second Starbucks was missing, I finally decided to just search for Starbucks on my Google Maps app (I stopped using the Apple Maps app when it got me lost going to a Starbucks in Lisle, IL and that fact that it just isn’t good). This worked and I will never use that Starbucks app again. Basically, if an app gets me lost going to Starbucks, it gets deleted. So, Downcast, YNAB, and Baltimore Ravens apps, please don’t try and get me to a Starbucks because I don’t want to delete you.

Since there isn’t much to report, here is a video of some poisonous dart frogs wrestling at the Baltimore Aquarium.

[wpvideo 8iC2WCJ8]

Well, we are on to the last leg of our babymoon. And today (Wednesday) is 24 Weeks!

We started the day by saying goodbye to our close friends and driving to Arlington Cemetery. In our minds, Americans should be required to visit this place as part of their education. It is so hard to walk through such a somber place without recognizing the great amount of respect the people of our armed forces deserve for protecting the freedom of Americans. It’s also difficult not to think about the reasons these people died in service of the United States of America. Arlington Cemetery is such a beautiful place that inherently gives respect to all people that have died in service, whether they are buried or memorialized there or not.

While all of these thoughts swirl throughout your mind, you also wonder if we are losing the very precious freedoms and ideals for which these public servants paid such a high price. As our country increasingly puts faith in government and less in God and as Congress’ average time of service in the armed forces decreases, we believe visits to Arlington Cemetery would serve as a reminder how fallible government is and cause people to redefine the phrase “public servant” in their minds. And honestly, visits to civil war and revolutionary war battlefields have a similar effect.

Ok. Here are some pictures of our time at Arlington:

View from below of Robert E. Lee’s house

View of Arlington and D.C. from Robert E. Lee’s House

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

J and A in front of the cherry blossoms.

Once we walked throughout the cemetery, which turns out to be a lot of walking up and down lots of hills, we needed to get some lunch. We drove to D.C. and found a Baja Fresh on I Street and 20th street. Then we drove around the monuments and began our drive to our hotel in Rockville.

On our way to Rockville, we realized that we would be awfully close to Great Falls National Park. And we all know how much the JandA Experience loves national parks (well we might not know since we started blogging after our national park trips). Anyway, this place is cool! We walked throughout the river trails and were able to get some great views of the Potomac.

After spending a few hours at the park, we started our drive again to Rockville. We got to our hotel and this is when we found out about the explosions at the Boston Marathon. We are very saddened by these events and pray for the families affected. It is hard to describe our day in this blog, knowing that on the same day such a terrible event happened.

We unpacked and watched the news while trying to find a place to eat dinner. Luckily, our hotel is only 15 minutes away from a Founding Farmers.

This place is exactly the type of restaurant we enjoy. They only serve fresh quality food made on the premises. We started out by ordering the skillet honey-butter cornbread.

Justine ordered a lemonade (fresh-squeezed) and I ordered a Manhattan Soda (basically a homemade coffee soda).

For our meal, we each ordered the ribeye steak with carrots and mashed potatoes.

Well, that’s it for Monday. Thanks for reading!

As you all know, our first day of the babymoon consisted of some good ol’-fashioned hard work and some late night poker. Naturally, we were looking forward to sleeping in, listening to Walk in the Word, and having a slow start to the day before moving on to Washington D.C.

Well…I awakened to Justine asking me about the National Aquarium in Baltimore. I then quickly realized that she had never been there before and we started to brainstorm ways we could fit it into the trip. We decided that it had to be today, on our way to DC (we try to stick by the rule of not letting plans get in the way of fun on vacation). After letting our friends know about our newfound plans, packing our bags, and saying goodbye (and our thank yous!!!), we were now spending our Sunday morning driving to B-more and listening to  XM Radio “The Message” praise music.

Luckily, we arrived at the aquarium right when they recommend NOT coming if you want “the best experience.” Ok……

So, there’s lots to see here. We’re hoping that our nieces and nephews are reading this post ’cause we have some cool pictures.

When are eels not cool…(besides when they are shrieking)

Love the ugly ones. Just couldn’t take our eyes off of it.

The National Aquarium in Baltimore is pretty sweet. After all of that walking, we convinced ourselves that we deserved some crabcakes. So, we walked on over to Phillips at their new location (well, new to us). It’s back where the old ESPN Zone used to be, next to the Barnes & Noble.

The new location is awesome and we were able to sit by the water, outside in the beautiful Maryland weather. We ordered some corn on the cob and had a couple crab cakes before we had to head off to the rest of the trip.

After an hour and a half, we arrived in DC and had dinner with our friends. Now we are trying to plan our next adventure (aren’t we all).

Ok. So…as you can probably tell from the title, this is our babymoon. Everyone has told us that we need to take a babymoon (the last trip we will take, just the two of us, for  a long time).  As any self-respecting American traveler would do, we chose our last trip to be in the beautiful state of Maryland. We will be able to visit very good friends, eat lots of crabs and crab cakes, see the nation’s capital, Annapolis, the Chesapeake bay, eat more crabs and crab cakes, go to the beach, see amazing historical places, watch the best lacrosse, and eat a few crabcakes.

We flew in to Baltimore and had to rent a car. We used Enterprise, which we conveniently booked through Kayak. So, you know how when you book your rental car they show you a picture of the car you could get…well, it’s usually the coolest choice among that class of cars. We booked an intermediate size knowing that we would be driving a lot and needed the high MPG (also thinking we would get the advertised Ford Focus or Honda Civic). It was very convenient for Enterprise that the only car the had left was the Nissan Cube.

Sorry, MPG…but I will not be seen driving this car around town. No offense to anyone who likes this car (I am a fan of innovative thinking and I never bashed the Pontiac Aztec and I enjoy the Honda Element). But, this is our babymoon and I just won’t do it. I quickly justified in my mind that I can’t drive my pregnant wife around in a sardine can like this.

I really believe that Enterprise did this on purpose. So, for 7 dollars more a day, we got a 2013 Chevy Malibu and my pride has gone unscathed.

For our first part of the trip, we wanted to make sure we visited our friends. It turns out that they also were mulching their backyard this weekend. So, we pitched in and mulched the yard. In our family, we highly value work and thought there was no better way to begin a vacation than working in the beautiful state of Maryland.

 /

After a hard day’s work, we were able to rest and hang out with friends (come on…we’re practically family after mulching, right?). We had some amazing food, watched some television and of course, played poker. Team jandaexperience won poker night, an occurrence that most people are used to by now.

So, here’s to a great day and a great babymoon.