Kickin' Back...

We took a few days off this last weekend and headed for the beach. We were just north of Atlantic City, NJ, in the small town of Absecon. We scored a great deal on a resort, so we had a super place to stay, complete with pool and hot tub, beautiful view of the bay, and a short drive to the beach. (Well, it should have been short. We can make anything take a long time. But I digress. More on that later...)

We really had no agenda for the weekend. Here are some highlights...

The weather was gorgeous! We were outside most of the time because it was so beautiful!

Spending time in the pool & hot tub at the hotel.

Going down to the bay that we thought was a beach... only to learn that the satellite images we looked at must be old, because it is now just an overgrown marsh. Apparently many others also learned this - there was lots of evidence of vehicles turning around.

Trying to find breakfast on Sunday morning. We didn't want to eat at our hotel, because the breakfast buffet was $25/person. (If it gives you any perspective, the seafood buffet the night before was $70/person! Our meals would have cost more than our room, based on the deal we found...) So, we were out and about, looking for a place to stop. Since we were heading towards Atlantic City or Brigantine for the day, we thought we'd just stop there somewhere for breakfast. This should have been a relatively easy task. We managed to make it quite complicated, very hilarious, and totally memorable. First, we tried to follow signs for Brigantine. We were doing well, and then suddenly there were no more signs. How does that work? It was like the road they wanted us to take just disappeared. So, we were officially lost in Atlantic City, although we could still find our way out. It was getting later and I was getting hungrier (yes, it was my fault!), so we decided to stop in Atlantic City to eat before making another valiant attempt to get to Brigantine. We drove down various streets, and were surprised to find very few breakfast options. Pizza just didn't sound right. :) Eventually, we got to the blocks of the city that had the Outlet Stores. We though certainly, something would be in there. The next major challenge - parking. People were walking everywhere, but we couldn't figure out where to park! We drove around the block, and then spotted parking signs, and drove around the block again. Those parking signs must have been a joke, because they didn't lead anywhere, so we drove around again. We thought we saw something, but it was only employee parking, so we drove around again. We noted a different parking sign, but were too late to get over into the right lane, so we drove around again. This time, we saw McDonalds on the right (yes, we were hungry!) and noticed they had their OWN parking lot. Well, of course, we were in the wrong lane, so we made yet another loop around the block. We were getting to be pros. We slipped into the McDonalds parking lot behind another vehicle, and watched them take the very last spot in the parking lot! We circled the parking lot a few times, and waited a bit until we could get a spot. We finally found a spot, got inside, and found out we missed breakfast by about 3 minutes. So, we had cheeseburgers for breakfast. We laughed. What else can you do?!

So, back on the road. We left McDonalds and found ourselves exactly on the road we wanted all along. We headed right over to Brigantine with no more trouble, and enjoyed a beautiful day on the beach.

Ice cream at Dairy Queen was another highlight.

We tried to watch an outdoor movie at our hotel, but that didn't work so well. They couldn't seem to get past the menu screen until we gave up and went inside. That seemed to absolve all technical difficulties. Funny...

On the way home, we stopped at a Stewart's drive-in to get Root Beer Floats. Good times.

[Pics will come, but the camera is currently being very uncooperative.]