Dorothy Piotrowski’s blog

That was the best sleep we had for the last few days.  While Karen was sleeping, I sat on the front porch and checked out Weather.com.  It said that it was going to be raining again during the night on Friday and on Saturday morning, exactly when we would have to take the tent down.  I gave Karen this information and we decided that we should stay in the cabin again tonight which meant taking down the tent today.

We went to the campground office and extended our stay by one more day.  We then went back to B-49 and torn down the site.  Since it rained last night, there was a bit of water inside the tent.  I need to figure out why the fly is letting in the rain.  Any suggestions?  We took our stuff back to the cabin and decided since the sun was shining, we should go to the beach.  We didn’t want to drive too far, so we went to Sea Isle beach which is only about 5 minutes from the campground.  We crossed the dunes and then saw that there were alot of people on the beach for a Friday.  The afternoon was spent reading, napping, burning ie tanning and eating.

We wanted to have seafood again so we went to Mike’s Seafood & Raw Bar and sat on the back deck.  We had “The Nantucket” which was a 1-1/4 pound lobster stuffed with bread scallops and shrimp.  It was sure yummy.  We got back to the campground and since we had quite a bit of firewood leftover, we finally got a great fire going tonight.  The last day of vacation is always the best.

Where to start.  The rain started around 9:30pm last night but it was a steady light drizzle.  When we finally went to sleep, which was around 11:30pm, there was no rain in the tent.  But around 3am, Karen noticed that the front room had quite a bit of water and that she and her sleeping bag were also getting wet.  As the night progressed, it seemed that the rain was getting harder and by the time we got up around 8am, it was just pouring.  I signed onto the web and learned that there was a severe storm coming in the morning.  We made an executive decision to rent a cabin for tonight.  We got the keys and checked it out.  It’s really cute.  It’s just one room, basically the same size as the tent.  We packed up a few things from our tent site and took them over to our cabin.

It was a shopping day today because of the rain.  We first had breakfast at Dino’s Seaville Diner on the recommendation of one of the ladies in the camp store.  It’s truly a locals joint.  The breakfast was really good and cheap.  Since it’s Bath & Body Works Semi-Annual sale, we wanted to hit a few of them.  We started at the Hamilton Mall in May’s Landing.  The shopping was excellent and there were many good deals.  While looking at the mall directory, we noticed that there was an Olive Garden .  We decided to go and have a late lunch and we were able to actually get into the restaurant.

After lunch, we went to Vineland to the Cumberland Mall.  The BBW wasn’t as good as at Hamilton Mall but there were some purchases made.  For dinner, we thought we would try the Red Sky Cafe in Seaville.  We saw this restaurant yesterday when we went for firewood and noticed that the place was packed.  We ordered ahead and got crabmeat nachos, tacos and an enchilada which we enjoyed on our front porch back at the cabin.  We went back to our campsite and picked up some firewood.  We tried to get a fire going but it wasn’t meant to be.  We retired inside to enjoy a dry night of tv, while the rain pounded down on the roof of the cabin.

Today was another day with no plans.  According to ladies in the camp store, it wasn’t supposed to rain but it was going to be cool.  We thought what the heck, let’s head to the beach. 

We decided to go to Stone Harbor.  Again this is another beautiful beach.  We stopped in and had lunch at Yvette’s Cafe and then strolled through many of the shops on the main drag.  Since we’re not “in season” yet, parking is pretty easy to find close to the beach.  We bundled ourselves up and enjoyed a couple of hours of relaxing on the beach in the wind and cool temperatures.  There were actually a few very brave kids swimming in the water.

We wanted to cook again at the campsite so we stopped in at Avalon Seafood and picked up some orange roughy (fish).  We then went by the Acme grocery and picked up some Hawaiian Buns, potatoes, and carrots and dip.  Dinner was much quicker in the preparation tonight thanks to my new Coleman Party Grill.

Our campfire got rained out tonight so we headed inside to enjoy an evening of TV.

When doing our research for this vacation, we read about some wild horses at the Assateague Island National Seashore which is in Maryland.  The only quick way there is by taking the Cape May-Lewes ferry from New Jersey to Delaware, and then driving to Maryland.  We wanted to maximize our time so we decided to take the first ferry at 7:30am.  That means you have to be there by 7:00am.  That means you have to leave home by 6:30am.  That means getting up early.  The ferry ride was so smooth we didn’t even know we were moving.  It also could have been because we were napping in the car.  Once we landed in Delaware, the drive from the ferry terminal to the seashore took us only about an hour.

We got into the National Park and very quickly found some wild horses.  There were four of them including a baby horse.  They were just standing by the side of the road eating all of the grass, or rubbing off old fur on the tree branches.  One horse decided to jump the small railing and walk across the road.  Because you know, the grass is always greener on the other side.

We got back into our car and headed for the State Park.  We drove around but didn’t see any horses.  We thought we should check out the beach and what did we see in the distance, more horses.  We got back into the car and found a closer parking spot to the horses.  We crossed the dunes and make our way to the horses.  There were four of them again.  They were just standing near the shoreline.  One by one the horses decided to lay down in the sand.  Karen and I must have snapped for over a half hour.  Always staying far enough away but close enough to get some good pictures.  It was like our own horse photo shoot.

The other purpose for our trip was to hit the outlet malls in Rehoboth Beach.  Delaware is the home of no sales tax.  There were three Tanger Outlets that we visited.  Making sure to walk away with something from each mall.  We didn’t have much time left before getting back to catch the 7:45pm ferry, so we picked up take out from Cracker Barrel.  Everyone was jealous as we were enjoying our dinner in the car.  I decided to start the blog tonight from the ship.  The boat was rocking pretty good.

We decided to sleep in today since there was nothing on the agenda.  While laying in bed, it looked like it was going to a nice day weather wise so we thought we should go to the beach.  The question is which beach since New Jersey has so many nice ones.  We decided to go to Avalon.  Before hitting the beach, we stopped at Acme grocery store to get provisions.

We were really lucky to find a parking spot very close to the beach.  This was good since we somehow had quite a bit of stuff with us.  We got settled in our spot by 1pm and spent the afternoon eating (leftover turkey sandwiches that I made and another layer of the chocolate fudge cake), reading, napping and taking pictures.  We knew it was time to go by the fact that we were getting red.

Since we are by the ocean, we thought why not make scallops over the fire.  We went to Mike’s Seafood & Raw Bar in Sea Isle and picked up a pound of fresh scallops, a loaf of bread, a potatoe, lemon and three cobs of corn.  We also hit the Acme again to get butter sticks and salt and pepper.

We got the fire going but it took quite a while before it was ready for cooking.  Eventually about 2 hours after we started, we enjoyed a lovely meal.  I didn’t know how long you cook scallops for so I popped into the tent and fired up the laptop.  Thank God for the internet.

We ended the night by the campfire making popcorn in the new popcorn popper that we got at the Mannheim garage sale for $1.