So when we last checked in with a trip report, we'd been livin' it up easy with the Miner clan. But they left for Disney, and were summarily replaced in our lives with the Brown-Thomas clan. For the uninitiated, Christopher Brown-Thomas is Erica's first cousin, and their 4 kids are about the nicest, most wonderful small humans who exist. Chris' mom (Erica's aunt Patty) owns a condo in the same development as Erica's folks, and the B-T's come down for a month every summer. An added bonus is that their kids are older, and our kids look up to them, so they tend to act better whenever they're around.
Apart from doing lots of awesome things like seeing a satellite launch, then seeing the two booster rockets plummet back to earth in a freefall before firing their engines in order to LAND VERTICALLY ON THE LAUNCH PAD, we mostly gorged ourselves on tasty fresh fish, swam, watched movies, chilled, etc.--all of the things you're supposed to do there. The most interesting bit, though, was our second fishing trip aboard the good ship Orlando Princess, where Wynn (Chris' son) caught this monster kingfish.
We paid one of the ship's deckhands to butcher it, and then took its many steaks to good ol' Rusty's (see the previous restaurant guide). Rusty's was packed, and the live music was perfect for the outdoor setting. Our waitress informed us that we'd in fact brought them 9.5 pounds of prime fish meat, which turns out to be waaaaaay more than it sounds, and that they'd cook us 4 of those pounds to begin with. We said, "great." It turns out that four pounds worth of kingfish and the fixins is more than nine people can eat, and there was so much of it left over that I personally felt embarrassed to leave the table.
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| It's like he caught a whale |
We spent all of Tuesday cleaning the condo before leaving around 4:30. There has been some talk in Tom & Cher-land about selling the condo, which has predictable bummed out the kids. To them, Cocoa Beach is a place filled (already) with many happy memories of Marco Polo, sunburns, gecko hunting, surf camp, and after-dinner ice cream runs. Whether the selling happens is anyone's guess, really. But the farewell was tearful (even though we reminded them fifty times we'll be back down there for Thanksgiving…).
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| A very delighted James, seen here in the role of Tom Sawyer, caught this little Cuban tree frog |
We ended up driving about 5 hours to the interstate town of Walterboro, South Carolina, where we stayed in a perfectly cromulent Comfort Inn. The next day we went full Road Warrior and drove a total of 13 hours to Erica's aunt Mary Kay's place in Stone Harbor, NJ. There were a couple of highlights along the way:
First, we passed crappy South of the Border. Built in the 1950s, this uber-kitchey, Grade C road side attraction on the southern side of the North Carolina/South Carolina border is based entirely on outdated racial stereotyping of Mexicans and an inordinate love of fireworks. When we were kids we stayed at a hotel next door and Dad hoodwinked Molly and I into choosing an evening spent in the hotel pool over one wandering the carnival games and bazaars of South of the Border. Still never been there, which is fine.
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| Yes, that is a sombrero-shaped tower |
Second, we crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, a 17.6-mile bridge that twice dives down under the water into mile-long tunnel sections. Seen from above it looks like a really long bridge that just disappears into holes in the water, then pops back out again. It took a nervous 25 minutes to cross, as at one point you're about nine miles out in the middle of the ocean. The bridge connects Norfolk, VA with the sparely-populated southern tip of the Delmarva Peninsula, a part of the country we'd never been in. It was mostly cornfields, though.
Third, at the top of Delmarva is Lewes, Delware (pronounced "Lewis," not "Lou's") with its famous ferry over Delaware Bay to Cape May, NJ. We made the ferry with a few minutes to spare, so walked around the pretty port for a bit before driving onto the ferry with a hundred or so other cars. Having been cooped up all day, the kids spent the 1.5 hour crossing running around the ferry's decks like they were a playground. To be fair, lots of other kids were doing that, too. After we landed in Cape May, we gorged ourselves at a late dinner at a very amazing restaurant called the Lobster House. This is exactly the kind of place you want it to be; its built right on the harbor, its filled with nautical curios and giant, taxidermied examples of local species, the fare couldn't be fresher, and you get to ward off aggressive seagulls while you eat on the dock. It was packed, even at 8:00pm. We housed a pound of calamari, a pound of shrimp, and two half pounds of grouper and scallops, plus a large order of fries. As it was already 9pm at that point, we skipped touring Cape May--a worthy vacation destination in its own right, built in the Victorian era as the first vacation spot for the wealthy of New York City and Philadelphia. By 9:30 we reached Stone Harbor and Erica's aunt's beach house (more on that in the next entry.) All in all, it was a DAY OF SIX STATES (South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey), a new Gholson family record.
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| Picture from the ferry crossing, maybe not Christmas card material |
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