5/27/2017 A Little More Delaware, A Little More Maryland, and on to New Joy-zee.

Holiday Park Campground was next in line for our new home. Located out in the sticks in a “town” called Greensboro, MD, this was another overpriced stopover along our east coast journey. Thick trees, water and electric only, sites of gravel and mud, it definitely did not warrant the $44 per night rate. But then, like most of the scarce RV parks we are encountering, people are willing to pay these high prices, so they can keep charging them. And this half of the country has very little public lands (BLM, Nat’l Forests, etc.) for those of us who would rather pay zero and boondock every now and then.

Still fighting the rain, we only had the opportunity to check out a couple of spots. First up was New Castle, DE. We loaded up Woodrow Wilson and road tripped into town. As luck would have it, New Castle is a very small, quaint, piece of history and upon our arrival we fell into their Historical Society’s big “A Day in Old New Castle” celebration. The old town area gets all dolled up and folks dress in period costumes to give tours of some of the old residences/buildings, to the tune of $25 per ticket for each adult. I’m still a cheap bast*%$, so we walked Woody around the town without touring inside. Some of the places still standing have been doing so since the 16-1700’s. Very cool…

The other place we got to see without getting wet was in Cambridge, MD. We drove out to the Choptank River Lighthouse and walked around the  park there and the Cambridge Yacht Club. The folks there have a couple of bucks, judging by some of the toys floating on the water. Another thing we are seeing a lot of on this half of the  world, the people here are extreme patriots and thankful to our servicemen, as evidenced by the sheer number of war memorials we are encountering.

Time to move on, reservations had been made (covering Memorial Day weekend), so off to New Jersey we went. We snagged a week at  Shady Pines MH & RV Resort in Galloway Township outside of Atlantic City. Still pricey, but the week gave us time to stretch and breath while we got to experience the Jersey Shores, AC, Ocean City, and Cape May. Still a bit rainy, but we gave it that good ol’ college try anyways.

We did not know what to expect in Atlantic City and at the boardwalk. With the past hurricane damage and on-going restoration, I thought the boardwalk might have been back to “business as usual” by now. We were a bit surprised at the number of businesses still closed up and the lack of humans frequenting the businesses that were open. Even the boardwalk casinos seemed like ghost towns; lots of empty floor spaces, majority of card tables closed and scant few gamblers to be found. But the actual boardwalk itself showed no signs of hurricane damage (at least to we who have never seen it before the hurricanes). It was good to see state run casinos are the same everywhere, no problem in allowing us to donate to the local economy. (Note: Somewhere in cyberspace I lost my original media gallery of pictures that I originally posted. These photos are strictly off the top of my head and hopefully still an accurate depiction of the Atlantic City Beach Boardwalk.)

Cape May is home to the Cape May Point State Park. There we found the Cape May Lighthouse and the remnants of a WWII gun emplacement bunker on the beach. I guess I did a lot of sleeping in history class, I was not aware of a lot of WWII activity on this coast. But we are running into a lot of WWII bunkers of all sorts, as well as lookout towers all up and down the coast. Further down the coast we found what was left of the S.S. Atlantus, one of several experimental ships made of concrete during WWI, which sunk and now stands partially exposed just off the beach. Downtown had a large outdoor mall shopping area we let Woody lead us about, until we saw the teeny, tiny, itty-bitty sign that prohibited dogs in that area. Oops…So we headed down some of the skinny streets lined with historical Victorian homes, many of which have been converted to businesses, particularly B&B’s. We wanted to stroll the promenade (concrete boardwalk) which fronted the beach, but, alas, not a dog-friendly city.

We wanted to check out the further reaches of the boardwalk, away from the central area, so a jaunt to the North Beach area in the city of Ventnor was in order. On the way we wandered by the Absecon Lighthouse. Kinda strangely situated a bit distant from the water, it was not open to the public at the time of our pass-by, so one quick pic and on to North Beach. We were happy to be able to park on surface streets without having to pay through the nose (free, but with time constraints). A short walk got us to the beach where we ran into a unique situation. Now, up to about 5 years ago we have been California “lifers”, lived there all our lives. I grew up in Orange County, in the heart of the Southern California beach lifestyle. We’ve been all over the country, visited innumerable beaches. Evidently, this area of New Jersey makes you pay to enjoy the beach. They required a “beach badge” which we were supposed to purchase at some location undisclosed on the signage. Don’t tell anyone, but we became scofflaws and ventured out onto the boardwalk and beach without said “beach badges”. (Oh, great, now all of our travels will include the added stress of constantly looking over our shoulders for Johnny Law, always on the run, trying to stay one step ahead of our pursuers). And the beach here in Ventnor City was further unique in that posted signage prohibited dogs, alcohol, picnicking, and ball playing…basically all the reasons, except for the sun, for anyone wanting to go to the beach. The only prohibitions they need to add are no swimming or suntanning. There was a fishing pier where one has to pass through 2 gates. The public is allowed to the second gate, but then only paying “members” could pass gate #2 to the end of the pier and only members were allowed to fish off this pier. I was surprised they did not have a sign prohibiting fish hooks posted somewhere. The boardwalk was crowded, this being Memorial Day Weekend, with joggers and bikers, and the beach had ample “sunbathers” even though the weather was not great with overcast conditions. While strolling the boardwalk we passed by all the beach houses, many of which were your typical beach rental properties, some of them very impressive in structure. One of them was for sale and out of curiosity a quick check of realtor.com revealed the selling price of just short of $3M. I’d hate to have to live like that (piled on sarcasm here)…

The rain is still with us here, planning our escape for tomorrow. Jeanne has been feverishly working on research/itinerary for our weeklong stay near New York City. A very large part of that research involved other folks’ blogged experiences. Particular shout out and thank you goes to Nina of wheelingit.us , one of the blogs we regularly follow. She is very detailed when it comes to the bolts and nuts of planning attacks on destination locations. So tomorrow, we’re off to play our new reality game, “Avoid Those Toll Roads!” ’Til next post…