Monday Oct 16 – Asbury Park, NJ – Cape May – Lewes DE – Rehoboth Beach – Dewey Beach, DE
I’m sure that there are beautiful places in New Jersey, and that it’s possible to have a relaxing time on the Jersey shore, but it didn’t happen for me on this trip, so the New Jersey experience still sucks as far as I’m concerned!
My plan is to hug the Atlantic coast as closely as possible all the way to North Carolina. After I escaped New Jersey, this plan worked great! But getting through New Jersey just was not a good experience for me.
I would study my map, identify a road that went down the coast, and start down that road. But more than once the road signs simply evaporated after a few miles, and so here I am again wandering the trackless wastes of the endless New Jersey suburbs, looking for a clue as to which is the right direction to go, … getting more and more pissed-off as I sit at stupid, endless suburban traffic lights.
I am to take the Cape May Ferry across the mouth of the Delaware River estuary this afternoon. Turns out the last ferry is at 5PM, so at about 1 PM in Toms River NJ, I dutifully called and made a reservation, and was told to be there by 4:30 at the latest.
This is why I am unusually stressed at the endless traffic lights.
My best move of the day was to head to the Forsythe Wildlife Sanctuary and take the hour or so required to do the little nature hikes and drive the 8 mile bird-watching loop (yes, 8 miles at < 10 mph takes almost an hour). There were the usual suspects – the white egrets, snowy egrets and great blue herons – such as one can see from Maine to Florida and on the bike path in Richardson Bay. They are always beautiful wherever they are. But there were also swarms of migrating geese and duckies of various persuasions. There were these critters called brants, seriously muscular ducks with whitish bodies and black necks, that I would not want to mess with. They gave the definite impression what they had been flapping those wings for hundreds of miles and had hundreds more to go and weren’t take any s–t from nobody.
I’m out of there by 2:30-ish, so now I have about 2 hours to do 1 hour’s worth of driving. I manage to generate more stress for myself by heading to the beach again, to check out the community of Ocean Beach NJ (which looked like a pretty cool place, all my bitching above notwithstanding…), getting lost again and stuck on the wrong side of a drawbridge and generally getting my blood pressure up until finally I got smart and just put myself on the Garden State Parkway and drove to the d—-ed ferry, to get in line and chill out.
After a really enjoyable 70 minute ferry ride across the wide mouth of the Delaware River, here I am in Dewey Beach, Delaware, at a perfect little motel with everything in the world that I could want. I deserve it! I’ve had some pretty crummy luck with lodging the last few days.)
I can look out my balcony at the lagoon or I can (and do) walk 200 yards across the road to the beach for a little nighttime surf watchin.
Tuesday Oct 17 Dewey Beach, DE – Ocean City MD – Pocomoke City MD – Norfolk VA – Virginia Beach VA
One reason I choose this route is that I have a lot of history with this area. When I lived in DC in the 70’s I (we at the time) owned a sweet little A frame cottage on a canal in Bethany Beach right down the road. So part of today’s morning plan is to drive by and admire it, and as it turns out I get a little misty about paths not taken and all that. What if I’d stayed on the East Coast instead of moving to San Diego to try for that high tech home run? (which turned out to be more like getting hit by a pitch and sent to first :).
The memory lane interlude made me hungry, so I got breakfast in Ocean City, then spend the afternoon on a slow drive through the always pleasant backwater of the Delmarva peninsula, eventually crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
I had studied my AAA accommodations book, and determined firstly that rooms were pretty cheap this time of year in Virginia Beach, and secondly that the Thunderbird Motel was among the cheapest. So that is what I aimed for.
Virginia Beach turns out to be a pretty big beach town, with 2-3 miles of beach that is basically a solid row of motels, from 4 to 20-ish stories. The beach is clean and wide, and there is a wide promenade for strolling, with a separate bike path — it’s pretty deluxe.
I get a room on the third floor of the good old T-bird Motel. It’s pretty seedy, but the bed is comfortable, the remote control works, and I can open the door on my balcony and watch the surf and hear it crash as I nod off to bed, so what’s a little grime around the edges?
I take an evening beach stroll and play around in the surf a bit, then while washing my feet off at the outside shower I notice that the pool is actually warm and clean (and sheltered from the wind) so I even take a swim!
Wednesday Oct 18 Virginia Beach VA – Chesapeake VA – Nags Head NC
It’s still foggy and rainy as it has been since Monday morning, but it’s supposed to clear up tonight. I am thinking of the irony of rooms costing $80 if you can get em at all in the interior of Massachusetts, and then all the rooms you want for $35 right on the ocean two days later. I’m also thinking that if I had my druthers I’d rather have had cool temperatures and the threat of rain last weekend to keep the New England crowds down, and sparkling clear warm days during these weekdays at the beach, but then I snap myself out of it and am just glad to be here like I oughta be!
I try to get fancy driving out of town in the morning and get lost (or rather stranded by a total lack of road signs again) — I’ve been through this area a few times in my life, and have never really liked it. It’s a heavy duty Navy area (right next to Norfolk Naval Base), so there’s all these jarheads zooming around in their souped up pickups. They do have a rocking nice beach however…
All the buzz here is about those poor sailors from the USS Cole, because they are bringing their bodies to Norfolk today.
After an hour or so of driving, including skirting the edges of the wonderfully named Great Dismal Swamp, I come to the North Carolina border, and instantly things are better! I was un-fed and un-caffienated so far that day, and I almost stopped at a Hardee’s just to get some kind of food, but held out for real breakfast, and then there was a billboard for Southland’s restaurant in four miles.
Southland’s turned out to be one of two places right at the state line, whose main purpose in the world was to sell cheap cigarettes. Once inside the restaurant I find that along with breakfast they are offering a lunch buffet with TWO kind of homemade barbeque. Boy oh boy, I like North Carolina already. Among the other goodies is something called Brunswick Stew (pronounced “Bernswick”) which is yet more bbq with corn and okra, and collard greens, and fried sweet potatoes — yee haw!
As I was paying, the cashier said something like: “singer?” I say, “huh?” She says “singer?” I say “excuse me?” She says “do you want the singer (i.e. senior) discount?”. I say, “… uh … sure!” I’m insulted, I guess… 😐
I continue the drive to the coast, past the very sand dune where the Wright Brothers took off, to Nags Head, where I get a room, hop across the highway to the beach, and go swimming in the ocean! I’ve decided not to drive all the way down the Outer Banks to Okracoke and another ferry tomorrow, so this evening I drive down part way the island chain to yet another wildlife sanctuary to take a sunset walk.