Around Chesapeake Beach

This morning was a brighter day and at dawn there was quite a bit of pink in the sky, viewed over the grounds of the hotel where there is an open air bandstand for summer days!

After breakfast we had a little walk around the resort, including its created beach and wedding dome and the adjacent former Chesapeake Beach railway station building.

We were intrigued by the apparent birds (heron's?) nest on top of a post in the marina..

The railway was built in the late 19th century to bring people from Washington DC to the beach where one of the attractions was an enormous wooden roller coaster ride.  It closed in 1935 when cars started to be popular.

Old photographs in the hotel showed the railway, the paddle steamers that also brought people down from DC and the long queues to get back on the boats at the end of the day.

(Apologies for the reflections in the glass over the pictures)

The station building is now a museum but it was shut for the winter.  Instead we walked along the old railway line which is now a trail, much of it on a board walk over a swampy creek.

We saw a few birds, including a Blue Heron..

A kingfisher..

..and a Northern Mocking Bird..

At the end of the trail we hoped that we might see one of a pair of Bald Eagles which are said to be nesting in the trees but no luck today.

We moved up the coast to have a look at North Beach..

This is the western shore of Chesapeake Bay which is a 165 mile stretch of water which divides Maryland.  It is very calm water and the ducks seemed to be as at home on the beach as the gulls.