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Getting started

Who this is for: anyone opening OCMD Explorer for the first time — most likely on a phone, quite possibly standing on the Boardwalk already. Last updated: 2026-08-30

This gets you from a blank screen to a guide that knows where you are staying, in about five minutes. Nothing here requires an account, and nothing here requires signal after the first load.

Contents

1. Tell the guide where you're staying

Do this first. It changes almost every other page.

Open Yours → Your trip, or the home-base control at the top of most pages, and pick the street you're staying on — 27th Street, Somerset, 118th, wherever your hotel or rental is. The list runs south to north, Inlet upward, the same way the island does.

What to expect: the guide starts answering in walking minutes instead of addresses. A restaurant twelve blocks north stops being "on 39th St" and becomes "about 15 minutes' walk". Lists that used to be alphabetical start sorting by how far you'd actually go.

How to verify it worked: a chip appears reading "Staying near 27th St". Open Every place and check that the walk times look plausible for where you are.

If your street isn't listed, pick the nearest one that is. The estimate is a straight-line walk at 3 mph, rounded, and hedged with a "~" everywhere it appears — it is a floor, not a route, and one block of error will not mislead you.

2. Find something to do right now

Go to Today. The page answers one question — what is worth doing in the next few hours — using today's date, the season, the weather, and the tide.

What to expect: a handful of things that are actually open, with the reason they are suggested. If it's raining you'll get the indoor list; if it's a Tuesday in February you will get a short and honest page rather than a padded one.

How to verify it worked: the header shows today's forecast — a temperature, a condition, and the wind. If it shows nothing, the National Weather Service is unreachable and the guide has correctly declined to guess. Everything else on the page still works.

3. Pin what you like to a trip

Anywhere you see a place you want, use the pin control. Pinned places collect under Yours → Your trip, where you can arrange them into days, add meals, and reorder them.

What to expect: the trip lives in your browser. There is no sign-up wall and no sync — closing the tab does not lose it, and clearing your browser data does.

How to verify it worked: the trip page lists what you pinned, grouped by day.

To share it, use the share control on the trip page. The whole itinerary is encoded into the link itself — no account, no server record, nothing stored on our side. Anyone you send it to opens your exact plan.

4. Save it for the dead zones

Ocean City has them: mid-island parking garages, the far end of the Boardwalk, the inlet in August when fifty thousand phones are competing.

Visit Yours → Offline pack once while you have signal.

What to expect: your pinned trip — names, addresses, phone numbers and season hours — plus the pages you have recently read and the district you are standing in, all readable with no connection.

How to verify it worked: turn on airplane mode and open the guide. Your trip should still be there. What you get is a snapshot taken while you had signal, so live things (tides, "open now" badges) correctly stop claiming to be current.

What you do not need

  • An account. Optional, and only for carrying your game progress and pins between devices. Every page, every guide and the whole game work signed out.
  • An app. This is a website. It will offer to install to your home screen; that is the same site in a different frame.
  • To turn on location. The guide never asks. Home base is a street you choose, not a position we read.

Where to go next

  • User guide — every feature, organised by what you are trying to do
  • FAQ — the things people ask first
  • Glossary — what a "thread", a "Sand Dollar" or the "Coastal Highway spine" means here
  • Troubleshooting — when something looks wrong