The temperature continues to yo-yo. This morning was around 10°C climbing to around 15°C by mid-afternoon. We decided it was time to have lunch out so we headed north to the town of Darien about 25 miles away.
Friends of ours had stayed at this campsite recently and told us about a small restaurant that had good shrimp meals. The plan was to go up on the I95 and after lunch we would drive around the area and come back on the local roads.
We reached Darian and our first thoughts were that the place had seen better days, it looked as though the economic downturn was not kind to the town. We found the restaurant, which we had been warned about not looking the greatest, and went inside. It was surprisingly busy for a lunch time but we eventually ordered the shrimp basket. We had been advised to go for the baskets rather than the meals as they were pretty large and the meals were really large!
The baskets had 1/2lb of shrimp, which was plenty and delicious. Once the meal was over we headed out to find the waterfront park that Lyn had read about, from the description appeared to be a large park with a boardwalk along the river. We finally found the place, it was about 100ft x 100ft with a play structure in the middle and no sign of the boardwalk.
Next we headed north to try and find some fishing villages that were mentioned in some information on the local area. As we headed out of town there was a real mish-mash of housing along the road from beautiful bungalows to run down trailers, unfortunately the latter were more prevalent. We took a turn off the main road into what appeared to be a luxury sub-divison under development. The house there were large and well cared for, but there were far more empty lots than houses, and no sign of any construction.
The fishing villages were just a group of reasonable sized houses close to a launching ramp and small harbour. Nowhere near the character of fishing villages in NZ, Scotland or Cornwall!
Back at the campsite we sat out for while enjoying what warmth was left of the day, then the breeze dropped and the pesky no-see-ums came out to play. Time to head in.