rehoboth beach

As the summer season comes to a close, the Cape Region prepares to say, “do svidaniya” to its scores of international exchange students staying in the area.

Representatives from the Lewes-Rehoboth Association of Churches (LRAC), Delaware Department of Transportation, and Beebe Medical Center met on Tuesday, Sept. 11, to discuss the International Student Outreach Program and its performance this year.

Mike Moshos was among more than 100 people drawn to Cloud 9 Restaurant by the promise of cocktails, hors d’oeuvres and an opportunity to learn about the latest housing proposal for the Rehoboth Beach area, The Villas at Harmon Bay.

A half-hour into the event, with people crowding around drawings of the community that is to be built near Rehoboth Beach Country Club, Moshos conceded that he was favorably impressed by the project.

A record number of visitors to the shore Labor Day weekend means parking meters have become local goldmines.

The weekend at Rehoboth Beach proved to be a record breaker, according to the Rehoboth-Dewey Beaches Chamber of Commerce. About 190,000 people packed into the small town, and when they come, they need a place to park.

Rehoboth Beach City Manager Greg Ferrese said $82,300 was collected from parking meters during the holiday weekend, whereas last year's holiday only brought in $48,000.

Labor Day was first established to give the working man a day off to rest.

Now, most view the holiday as a symbol that summer is officially over and spend more time celebrating than resting.

“I don’t even want to think about Labor Day,” Sarah Tweddle, 14, of Rehoboth Beach, said while sunbathing on the beach Thursday afternoon.

“That means summer is really over, it feels like it goes by faster every year.”

A summer of dry conditions and tolerable temperatures helped many of the business owners in downtown Rehoboth Beach meet their sales targets this season.

Some weeks were better than others, but many businesses are reporting sales were as good as or better than last year's, even though Del. 1 construction just outside of town frustrated tourists.

Traffic counts -- and cash register receipts -- proved that the number of visitors this summer equaled or even slightly exceeded the annual average of about 2.1 million visitors to downtown Rehoboth from Memorial Day through Labor Day, officials said.

The 2.7 miles of white concrete barriers placed along Route 1 between Five Points and Route 24 have become motorists’ worst nightmares.

With work beginning on the median of the Route 1 expansion project, traffic in the southbound lanes has been restricted to two lanes since the second week of August. Three lanes are available northbound.

Business owners along the busy corridor are feeling the pinch caused by traffic problems during the crest of the summer season.

A bucketful of fun in Rehoboth
Summer is the time for sand castles along the seashore.

Some people build for fun, while others get competitive. Sand castle contests are a beach tradition in coastal cities from Nantucket, Mass., to Rehoboth Beach, Del., to Galveston, Texas. This month, the governor of Maine even declared a "Build a Sand Castle Day."

In Rehoboth Beach, the sand castle contest has been a summertime event for nearly 30 years.

For the nation's big retailers, July wasn't exactly filled with fireworks and celebrations. For Delaware businesses, the month seemed a bit more festive -- depending on what was being sold, and where it was being bought.

At the state's beach resorts, it's been a generally lackluster season, retailers said, partly because of the occasional uncooperative meteorological gods, partly due to an early summer spike in gasoline prices. Elsewhere in the state, July's fortunes were brighter, retailers report.

Some people come to the beach every summer for more than a vacation.

There are dozens of places along the boardwalk and many of them rely on foreign workers. Rehoboth Beach sees close to 2,000 of them each year. They come to work, earn some cash and learn about America.

The Rehoboth-Dewey Chamber of Commerce hosted an event Tuesday that aimed to assist foreign workers with finding jobs, places to live and offering them general safety information.

Attorney Rob Witsil rides his bike nearly everyday from Rehoboth to Georgetown and has learned the dangers of the road first-hand.

"I go 22 miles from my house to my office, round trip, and nearly get hit everyday," he said. "Two of my friends have been hit seriously. One has been removed from the road by helicopter."

In 2005, the most recent statistics available, 86 cyclists were injured and two were killed statewide -- a decrease from 2004 when 101 cyclists were injured and three were killed. And while most of those injuries occurred in New Castle County, Sussex isn't too far behind, said Andrea Summers, public information officer for the Office of Highway Safety.