Beach Frolic

On a regular basis, Denis will bring up the ice cream sundaes at Duffer’s in Wildwood Crest.  He is in love.  We haven’t been to the Jersey Shore in four years, so I figured that it was time to get Denis his fix because I doubt that after this summer we will get there any time soon.

I booked us three nights at the Port Royal.  We each made some CDs for the ride there and back (a tradition–this year had a throwback theme–throwback as in our 10 year relationship : ).  And we were off.

So . . . it rained the whole way down.  A little disheartening, but our incredibly funny CDs kept our spirits up.  It had stopped raining by the time we arrived, and we felt we were set . . . until we stepped into our room.  The smell of some sort of musty b.o. was overpowering.  I wanted to cry about it.  Instead, I acted like a big girl, turned up the air con, opened the balcony door, and headed to the beach.  We figured that the room just needed to be aired out.

We were on the beach for about 40 minutes when it started to rain again.  Back to the room–ewwwwww.  I couldn’t stand it, so I went down to ask them to change our room–after waiting about 30 minutes (I am NOT over-exaggerating here) the guy finally came to me and told me that he would have the maid fumigate the room . . . umm, what does fumigating the room constitute, I asked.  She sprays some stuff, he said.  Are you kidding me?  Great.

I guess he felt bad, because he called our room a few minutes later and said he had another option for us.  When we got to the new room, we realized that not only were we being asphyxiated by the smell in the old room, but there was also about forty square feet missing from it because of a storage closet on the other side . . . who did I piss off so much when I called to book?

Once we got that out of the way, the vacation gradually improved.  I saw dolphins playing in the ocean each day–that was fun.

This is a bad picture of it, but you can see one of the fins.  It was cool, though, there must have been around 10 of them that day.

Growing up, my family and I went to Wildwood Crest ever summer, and without fail, we would reserve on day to walk from the beach in front of our hotel to the jetty that is just across the channel from Cape May.  This walk was one of my fondest memories of those vacations.  There are no hotels because the area is part of the coast guard reserve–it is peaceful and beautiful . . . but now they have the walk permanently blocked off to help a bird species make a come back . . . good for the birds, bad for Nicoles.  You can drive to a designated area and then walk through a trail in the dunes to get to the jetty, but it is not such a fun trip.  So we skipped it this year.  As I looked between the slats of the fence that blocked my fun, I noticed that the crabs had taken over the beach . . . I think they were laughing at me.

This jelly fish, though, was not laughing anymore : (

 

I don’t know if any of you can relate to this, but I have always wanted to run on the boardwalk–it has been a dream of mine (dream big, right).  So I was determined to accomplish this goal on our vacation.  Unfortunately, we decided to start running at 10:00am–an a REALLY sunny day.  (It was supposed to be an earlier start, but the beds down right sucked, and sleep did not come easily.)  We ran down the part of the the boardwalk that is before the boardwalk (you know what I mean if you have been there before–the concrete part that runs along the beach).  We were doing okay–it was hot, but we were going at a good pace (for us at least : ) and were easily dodging the death mobiles that they call bike rentals.  Then we got onto boardwalk proper.  It was hell.  And hell is running in all sun all the time and being attacked by various incarnations of bicycles–2 wheelers, 3 wheelers that were supposed to look like those low slung motorcycles, and the most deathly of all–the four wheel cart of a bike–misleadingly called a surrey . . . sound so sweet . . . but it isn’t.

So we are running, and the damn surrey is right next to us, and it won’t go past us (can’t go past us).  There are four people peddling the sucker and then there is this little kid, like hanging out in the basket on the front.  He waved to us and we waved back . . . then he started talking:

The kid’s like, “Hey, they’re going as fast as we are.”

Nicole . . . .

Kid, “Why aren’t we going faster?”

Nicole . . . 

Kid, “Hey, let’s go faster!”

I looked at Denis and we left the surrey in the dust.

We looked disgusting after the run; this picture doesn’t do it justice.  I think Denis may have wanted to kill me . . . I don’t want to run on the boardwalk again unless it is before 7:30 am.  (masochist)

As usual, skee ball and mini golf saved the day.

I seriously love skee ball . . . the only thing I may love more is the turtle that popped out of the fountain and scurried around on the mini golf course.

How cute is he : )  But I think he contributed to my mini golf ADD . . .

I am usually pretty good at mini golf–I still got a hole-in-one on this course and was under par . . . but I was all over the place.  That was me trying to use a field hockey flick to get my ball back into play–I just whacked it off the green : )  And that way my ball trying to hide from me and my satan club.  Good times!

Overall I am glad we went.  Our trips to Cape May were great–I think we will have to start staying there.  And we really did have a good time–not to mention, Denis finally got his sundae.