Ocean City

We drove into Ocean City past a wall of high-rise condominiums that seemed to appear out of nowhere along the flat marshland of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and Lia laughed that it looked like Miami had been dropped onto a barrier island. That’s not far off — Ocean City is a ten-mile strip of sand wedged between the Atlantic and Assawoman Bay, and it has been the Mid-Atlantic’s boardwalk resort of choice since Victorian visitors first arrived by rail in the 1870s. What we found underneath the high-rises, though, was something more old-fashioned: a proper wooden boardwalk, unapologetically nostalgic, doing exactly what boardwalks have done for a century.

The boardwalk and Trimper’s Rides

The three-mile boardwalk anchors everything here, and we spent our first evening walking its full length, weaving between families, cyclists, and the occasional Segway tour, past arcades blaring skee-ball bells and stands selling salt water taffy in every color. At the southern end sits Trimper’s Rides, an amusement park operating on the same spot since 1902, its 1902 carousel still hand-carved and still turning; Lia insisted on a ride, and I did not argue. We stopped, inevitably, at Thrasher’s for a paper cup of fries doused in malt vinegar, eating them boardwalk-style with a little wooden fork while the Ferris wheel lit up against the darkening sky.

The beach and the inlet

By day, Ocean City’s real draw is simply the beach itself — wide, flat, and groomed, running the entire length of the island with lifeguard stands spaced every few hundred meters. We rented chairs near the inlet at the southern tip, where charter boats head out each morning chasing marlin and tuna in the Atlantic canyons, and watched surf fishermen cast into the breakers as pelicans skimmed the waves. In the afternoon we crossed the Route 50 bridge into Assateague Island, just south of town, where wild horses wander the dunes completely unbothered by tourists — a strange, quiet contrast to the boardwalk’s noise just a few miles behind us.

Getting There

Ocean City is roughly a three-hour drive from both Washington, D.C. and Baltimore via Route 50, a route that gets notoriously congested on summer weekends, so an early or late departure pays off. The small Ocean City Municipal Airport handles private planes, but most visitors fly into Baltimore/Washington International or Salisbury Regional Airport, about forty-five minutes away, and drive the rest of the way. Once in town, a free municipal bus runs the length of the boardwalk and beyond, making a car unnecessary for getting around.