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This past weekend Sean and I traveled to northern New Jersey to attend a mega geocaching event. We had gone last year and I really love seeing historic buildings and nature all rolled into one! I suggested one route and we took the one he goes to work using. He wanted to show me where […]
The second week in July, Sean and I climbed in his ‘old’ hot car (the a/c had gone on it last month) to visit the Cape May, NJ area on a day trip. I did a little research so we could snap up a few earth caches. With these, you usually have to answer a few questions or take a photo of where you are. We headed down to Sunset Beach, the beach furthest south. It’s part of Cape May, but a beach where you can collect ‘Cape May Diamonds’. a clear quartz that can be cut to look like diamonds. The tiny ones on the top are the ‘diamonds’.
We indeed found some. We wrote our names in the sand too, but there, and not up the beach where the coords were on the cache page-oops. The sand was actually better to write in where we were. We did eventually go up in the area and find a physical cache.
Sean standing near the sign. Behind him is the wreck of the S.S. Atlantus.
After a storm, this cement ship got stuck there for good!
Looking up the beach where the real sand earth cache should have been written.
An old bath house
You can’t go any further than this in NJ
Outside the nice gift shop. They have Cape May diamonds that look like real diamonds here.
Look how much of the shipwreck is in this photo!
Look out/fire patrol tower near Sunset beach. Also a cache here at the Vet’s memorial.
Pretty Queen’s Anne Lace
We sat on Sunset beach a while, though it was warm and I was in a skirt. I really didn’t plan on sitting on the beach at all!
We headed up to the beach near the town of Cape May, but didn’t go shopping there. We then hit Wildwood and Sean wanted to get a Wildwood t-shirt for his collection. Someday I’ll be making him a t-shirt bed cover!
We were getting hungry for dinner and found a place on Yelp! in Ocean City. We sat at a picnic table and Sean treated me to a lobster dinner. As it wasn’t fancy, it was cheaper, but most of the meat was in the tail anyway.
Ocean City, NJ scenes Love the mansion!
Sean signing the Vet’s memorial cache and the memorial itself.
We looked for a lot of caches that day! We didn’t know it would be our last little trip in his 2005 Taurus. He was waiting to see how he fared in his new job before he looked at another vehicle. A few days ago, we all went car shopping. We stopped at one place and got ignored. We started to drive past another place and I pointed out a model he was interested in. Well, after test driving about 6 or more Hyundai makes, he picked a 2013 Elantra in bronze, the last test drive he did! He liked the added features of blue tooth and heated seats. It had low mileage too. So happy for him. We took a day trip yesterday to a cool park in Bucks County. That will be my next post!
Since we are a family of ‘grown-ups’, we decided to save up for a trip at Christmastime. I thought it may require much hustling and bustling at that time of year, but we would find out it wasn’t bad to travel the week before Christmas at all. I started to look through online Christmas packages for the southern states and Charleston, SC popped up. I narrowed it down to The French Quarter Inn and bought the package for the middle of the week of December 15th. This was back in August. I had no idea if my knee would cooperate by then. We had been saving up all year and had to only pay with cash or credit card for a few things. We were very pleased about this. It also helped that I read ‘Rhett Butler’s People’ that mostly centered in Charleston. I was anxious to try a sampling of some southern charm.
We got our Christmas decorations up early. Sean helped with the bay window and outside decor. I did the mantel and trees. Choosing clothes to take was difficult, but we ended up taking layers. I wore my long sweater most of the time we were there and my coat up in Williamsburg. We were going to let the cat stay in the kitchen and found the old baby gate. We put it up a few nights before we left and our almost 15 year old cat climbed over it. We had to leave him in the fairly heated basement with lots of covers and pillows.
We left about 6:45-7 am on the 15th and made pretty good time enough to stop a few times. The welcome center for North Carolina had a geocache, so we grabbed that for our NC state souvenir. We would also get SC the next day. The guys love getting those books and brochures anyway.
The first night we stopped in Raleigh, NC. Sean paid for two hotel nights for us. We went out to grab a bite where I had a coupon and decided to head over to the mall across the street as my cellphone wasn’t working properly. The mall was really nice! Turns out I did have a issue as I had recently changed my plan on the phone. We did a little Christmas shopping too. We then drove around the city which was fairly quiet. We looked at the state capital building and tree and even snooped for a few geocaches.
First Presbyterian Church of Raleigh
The streets were practically empty. We did enjoy some nicely decorated homes on the way over from the mall.
We couldn’t find the caches in the dark.
The next morning we headed to Charleston. We had been on the road the day before over 7 hours and were anxious to get to our destination. It was another long day in the car, but we did stop at a place that I hadn’t been to for 37 years-South of the Border!
It sure had expanded as I remember us sitting in the middle of a big parking lot back in 1977. Many of the expansions made over the years were closed down. There were a few caches here and we did look for them. Three of us couldn’t find the one one over the highway walk way. We did find Sean’s #400 there!
Next post-Charleston!!
The tomatoes! They are getting ripe now. Thank goodness we moved the garden as they are as big as softballs (some of them). The Romas are very chunky and meaty.
The color is off-these are certainly more red than orangish yellow.
Sean and I were driving around the other end of the county and found a Big Lots tonight! I happen to find some Crocs for only $15 and they are comfy!
This was Cosmo wanting to get up on my lap-nothing new!
I got the voucher info for the Beatlemania trip and I had to call the hotel to make arrangements. I could pick any day I wanted, so I picked a Saturday! Sean can come! He may not hear any of the bands, but how can you not even if you were standing near the gate? We can take turns anyway. He may take the Metro to DC or he could certainly go to Alexandria. The hotel looks like it has enough to it to keep anyone busy. Can’t wait!
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Tip from Pinterest ‘pinner’-when you get strawberries, add them to diluted vinegar (white or apple) and you can rinse them or not. Suppose to get the bacteria off them and make them last longer. I’m trying it, but I’m also making some strawberry pops today.
Collages & Creative Goodness 