Ocean City

Because not every day of vacation has perfect weather, here are some indoor ideas for fun on rainy and cloudy days. Mini-golf The vast majority of mini-golf courses that crowd the Coastal Highway are outdoors, but Old Pro Golf lets you tee up inside two large warehouse-style buildings in Ocean City. The two-level Safari Village course at 136th Street offers 18 holes surrounded by treehouselike walkways, gushing waterfalls and life-size animals; another option at 68th Street has an under-the-sea theme.

OCEAN CITY, Md. — Officials in Maryland and Delaware beach towns are ready to usher in what they hope is a strong summer beach season. The mayor of Ocean City, Md., says his town is ready for visitors and that hotel bookings are on track to increase from last year. The beach is in good condition and the decking on the 2.5-mile-long boardwalk has been replaced after a two-year project. In Delaware, officials are hoping Rehoboth's new status as one of Parents magazine's top 10...

The bachelorette party made its way toward the entrance of Seacrets, the young women sporting tank tops with such mantras as: "I need a break from class, put some wine in my glass" and "I'm here to party, buy me Bacardi. " It was their first night in Ocean City, the first night of a girls' weekend to celebrate a friend's upcoming wedding. Most of them grew up near Olney, so this was the beach where they vacationed as kids. And this was the bar they frequented during college breaks.

DOVER, Del. — A man arrested in Delaware as part of the takedown of an alleged East Coast cigarette smuggling ring that may have funneled money to terrorist groups is being held on $12.5 million cash bail. State police arrested Adel Abuzahrieh, 47, of Staten Island, N.Y., on Wednesday after a traffic stop on Route 1 near Milford. Police say they found 201 cases of cigarettes in the box truck he was driving and seized between $15,000 and $20,000 in cash. Delaware State Police...

They had a plan: "None of this drink-drink and pass out right away," said the kid with the trucker cap askew and the lollipop-stick legs. "Yeah," agreed his even lankier sidekick. "So what do we do?" I was dodging herds of bikini babes and packs of panting young men to keep eavesdropping on the pair. Lollipop was excited. "Long, sustained drinking. Sustained. We just keep drinking and drinking. " He took a swill of his Cherry Coke. This was zero hour in a rite of passage for thousands of high...

Wind and waves from the powerful northeaster that pummeled the Mid-Atlantic coast last week ate away as much as a quarter of Ocean City's dune line. The sand will have to be replaced, but the man-made storm barrier did its job, city officials said. Other than street flooding and minor wind damage, the resort appears to have weathered the worst of the storm. "There were no instances of ocean water anywhere west of the dune line, and no damage that we can see from the ocean to any property along the oceanfront," Mayor Rick...

Thank you for clearing up the mess over the not-so-mysterious Ocean City sea foam [ "Sea gunk wasn't sewage after all," Style, Sept. 2], images of which went viral during Hurricane Irene. As Paul Farhi's piece noted, the sticky foam covering the reporter in the video wasn't toxic after all. The assumption that the reporter — and through extension, the rest of us who visit these beaches every summer — was in danger was offensive and unfair. City officials reacted quickly and proactively to hurricane predictions to keep...

One of the two bridges into Ocean City, Md., will be shut down for fear it might collapse if a deteriorated 85-foot section isn't replaced. The bridge, which carries traffic across Route 90 over Assawoman Bay and into north Ocean City, was slapped with an emergency weight restriction last week after inspectors determined that deterioration had continued since they first noticed it last spring. The closure and work will begin as soon as the Maryland State Highway Administration comes up with a plan and a contractor.

As a year-round resident of Ocean City, I would like to comment on John Kelly's Aug. 18 column , "Overnight at Ocean City, a Degraded Beach Undergoes a Restoration," regarding the nighttime beach clean-up effort. On balance, Mr. Kelly's reporting was very good; the public works and maintenance division responsible for our beach deserves kudos for work that goes unnoticed by most. Early in the morning one can see how pristine the beach is before the masses descend. I take exception, though, to Mr....

More than 100 firefighters battled a blaze that gutted a popular Ocean City pizza shop and damaged a nearby building yesterday, sending plumes of thick black smoke along a boardwalk filled with some of the season's first tourists. Fire officials were called to the historic two-story building that housed the Dough Roller restaurant and a T-shirt shop on South Atlantic Street just after noon, Ocean City police spokesman Vance Row said. Capt. Steve Price of the Ocean City Fire Department said strong winds made it difficult to...

NEW YORK — A smuggling ring that made a fortune selling more than a million cartons of untaxed cigarettes in New York may have funneled some of the illicit proceeds to terrorist groups, authorities said Thursday. The traffickers lived modestly and had alleged links to known terrorists, including Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind cleric serving a life sentence for a conspiracy to blow up New York City landmarks. That combination has raised concerns about where the money went. "We know...

OCEAN CITY, Md. — Ocean City Police say an officer and another person were hurt when a motor scooter rear-ended the officer's patrol vehicle. It happened about 2:15 a.m. Monday on Coastal Highway at 41st Street. Police say the officer was stopped at a traffic light when a scooter operated by 25-year-old Edward Thomas Johnson of Salisbury crashed into the rear of the patrol vehicle. Police say Johnson was thrown from the scooter. He and the officer were taken to area hospitals.

OCEAN CITY, Md. — Ocean City police are investigating a hit-and-run in which the person who was hit was the one who ran. Police say 24-year-old Samuel Cribbs of Murrysville, Pa., was hit by a car early Sunday morning while crossing Coastal Highway at 49th Street. The vehicle stopped, but police say Cribbs fled the scene. Police say he crossed against the traffic signal and rolled onto the windshield of the car that hit him. Police couldn't find him after the crash....

OCEAN CITY, Md. — Police have charged two more suspects in a stabbing at an Ocean City convenience store. Officers were called to a 7-Eleven on Coastal Highway last month because of a fight and later charged 24-year-old Brandon Maurice Hudson with assault. WMDT-TV reports (http://bit.ly/12jcthW) that police now say their investigation has led them to charge two more people, 38-year-old Christopher Jones of Salisbury and 25-year-old Darian Waters of Snow Hill. Jones is charged with two counts of...

Growing up as a fine arts buff, David Williams said, he never imagined he'd manage the goings-on of a small Prince George's town. But the more he fell into managerial roles with his graphic arts career and volunteered with events in his own town of Berwyn Heights, it became evident that serving as Upper Marlboro's town clerk was a natural fit, despite his lack of experience in municipal government. "A friend of mine said there was a town clerk position here opening up, so I came and applied and saw I had...

Even if the weather hasn't quite come around yet, summer is almost here. For many people, that means it's almost time to head — very, very slowly, if you leave on a Friday — to the beach. For the environmentally conscious, however, a beach vacation is sometimes fraught with guilt. Few places exhibit man's encroachment on nature more clearly than a beach. Turn your back to the ocean, and you see rows of hotels and high-rise condos. Gas-powered jet skis skid across the ocean, and planes...

That was, indeed, a tornado on Thursday that people at one of the Washington region's major beach resorts heard, saw, photographed and marveled at. But the tornado that swept across Ocean City just before 4 p.m. was about as small as they come. In confirming Saturday that the Atlantic Ocean getaway spot hosted a true tornado, the National Weather Service gave the storm the lowest rating: EF0. The tornado had an estimated wind speed of 60 to 70 mph, followed a path about a half-mile long and about 40 yards wide, near 75th Street.

OCEAN CITY, Md. — Police have charged two more suspects in a stabbing at an Ocean City convenience store. Officers were called to a 7-Eleven on Coastal Highway last month because of a fight and later charged 24-year-old Brandon Maurice Hudson with assault. WMDT-TV reports (http://bit.ly/12jcthW) that police now say their investigation has led them to charge two more people, 38-year-old Christopher Jones of Salisbury and 25-year-old Darian Waters of Snow Hill. Jones is charged with two counts of...

Doctors have told Parker Haller that he has only a 35 percent chance of walking again. The odds are much greater that he will continue to make the people in his life proud, though, wheelchair or not. Parker, a sophomore at Hylton High School, was the victim of an accident in Ocean City last summer that left him paralyzed from the waist down. But with what his father Scott Haller describes as typical hard work and determination, Parker has set his sights on earning a spot on the U.S. Paralympics...

Paul A. Katz, 78, a compensation specialist who retired from the federal Office of Personnel Management in the mid-1980s, died March 23 at Laurel Regional Hospital. He had a series of heart attacks in the weeks before his death, said his daughter, Stacy Sheppard. Mr. Katz had worked for the OPM and its predecessor agency, the Civil Service Commission, for more than two decades. His responsibilities included helping devise standards for federal jobs and pay. After his government retirement, Mr. Katz was a consultant and an expert...