Nifty Fifty
Hello World,
I'm happy to report that I have returned safe and sound from Vacation Land, and lived to tell the tale, which is always my favorite way to travel. Actually, my vacation started early this year, because we opened vacation presents on Thursday instead of waiting until Saturday. We both got some practical vacation items, like sunscreen and beach towels, as well as other interesting items of a non-vacation-related variety, but none the less appreciated for all that. I'm afraid I jinxed Bill by getting him what I thought was an adorable cat-shaped gel pack, called a Boo Boo Buddy, which you put in the freezer and then apply to an injury to make it feel better. It only took until Sunday for him to walk into a tree root and hurt his toe, so I guess the Boo Boo Buddy did its job of causing an injury in order to make itself useful. Even though both cars were all packed and ready to go, the check-in time at the park is 3 PM, so there's no point in getting there too early, so we didn't leave until after 11:00, and soon had reason to regret it. We got stuck in the worst traffic in the Bronx, which turned out not to be road construction or accidents, but just too much traffic, and we couldn't even use the walkie-talkies to keep us company between both cars, because some surly truck driver kept breaking in on the same frequency. Later, Bill said that he checked his GPS device and found that we had been on the road for 47 minutes, traveled 10 miles, and averaged a whopping 4.5 MPH during that time. Fortunately, the problem cleared up after the bridge, and the rest of the way was smooth sailing in comparison.
We finally got to the park, hot and bedraggled, but late enough that they let us check right in and go to our sites, which it seemed were the only two open campsites out of 250 in the whole place. Alert readers may recall that I reserve the site behind mine, so that the previous campers don't erect their tent too close to the back of my site, but one thing I wasn't expecting this time around, was that the people on the corner were using my campsite to park their car on. I had to leave my car over on the other side by the gully, because the way they had everything set up, if they couldn't drive out through my site, their only other option would be to drive over their own tent. (I will not say that we did anything to chase them, but I will admit to unseemly rejoicing when they left on Sunday.) We tossed up both tents in a hurry and left everything else for later, and even Bill would agree that going down to the beach for the first time in a year was a special treat, and one that never fails to delight. The weather was glorious and the water was exceptional, and the cheese fries were just as we remembered them. All the aggravation of being stuck in traffic, and encroaching neighbors at the site, seemed to all drain away in the sun, surf, sand and gentle breezes that have been a tonic to weary souls the world over since time immemorial, and I ought to know.
Later, we dropped our wet things at the site and headed to our next destination, the Comfort Inn on Route 112 in Medford, which is just the latest in a series of hotel experiments over the years for us. It turned out to be very nice and inexpensive, especially compared to the more tourist-oriented hotels in Riverhead where we usually stay, and usually with very mixed results. Bill liked the flat panel TV with many of his favorite cable channels from home, and since he brought his laptop, he was able to make use of their in-room WIFI as well. Since the tavern at the hotel was closed for renovations, we had dinner at the nearby Metropolis Diner just down the road. (Here, I would be remiss if I didn't mention my favorite menu item from the diner, which I found at the top of their Finger Foods section, and was described as a Crock of Chili. I can't help but think that their idea of "finger foods" and mine must be completely different, because eating chili with your fingers is a concept which I hope will never catch on, at least in my lifetime.) In the morning, they provide a wonderful breakfast buffet, with a tempting assortment of muffins, bagels, French toast, waffles, rolls, fruit, eggs, cereal, coffee and juice, plus a charming alcove to enjoy it in. We considered the hotel a real find, especially after some of the duds that we stayed in previously. The funniest thing that happened was when Bill brought in the GPS from the car for safekeeping, and it woke us up in the middle of the night, shouting: "In point two miles, turn left! Turn left!" I said to Bill that the poor Nuvi lady was having nightmares of being stuck in traffic in the Bronx for an hour, and I can't say that I blame her.
We went back to the beach on Sunday, with more beautiful conditions, and not at all crowded. This gave Bill the opportunity to rescue what he thought was a drowned G.I. Joe doll out of the rocks, but turned out instead to be professional wrestler "HBK" Shawn Michaels of the WWE. He was none the worse for wear, except for a broken finger, although when Bill found him, his head was turned completely around to the back, which as wrestling moves go, probably doesn't have much to recommend it. Bill went home in the afternoon, so that he could go back to work and hold down the fort during the week, and did his usual bang-up job at it. I set up the rest of the site with the tables and chairs and shelves that I need, and even though it was crowded at the park early on the weekend, I had no trouble identifying the spy site, which this year was handily located right along with me on the inside circle of C Section. A camp site full of spies is easily recognized, because it always has a tent but no kitchen, no sign of occupancy no matter what time of day or night, no food or related products on the picnic table or grill, no indication of what the supposed occupants could be doing all day (for instance, fishing rods, kayaks, backpacks, bicycles or the like) and no car. It wasn't until after 10 PM that the spies came back to the site, and they turned out to be a young couple with two rambunctious boys, which I personally think it a brilliant disguise for espionage agents.
By Monday afternoon, the spies and I were all that was left in C Section, and they were gone every morning by 7 AM and didn't return until late at night. It didn't take long to discover what I referred to as "The 7:30 Deer," because I kept bumping into them in the street behind my campsite when I would walk around the park after dinner, and they showed up every night like clockwork. At that time of day, it's still perfectly light out, and the interesting thing about deer at Wildwood is that there is nothing for them to blend in with, because that distinctive faun color stands out no matter where they are. By the time I thought to bring my camera with me, everyone else had spotted them also, and so a couple of bad, blurry pictures are all I have to show for it, as they retreated back into the woods from the surging humanity. One day when I was walking back from the beach, I stepped over a twig that looked like a snake, and it occurred to me for the first time, that there are no snakes at Wildwood, and I had never seen or heard of any, after all these years out there. I think it was the very next day, when I spotted a tiny snake that had been run over in the road behind my site, which as bizarre coincidences go, ranks right up there with clockwork deer. So I thought this was an unusual year for wildlife, with a few new wrinkles left in the old campground still.
In another new wrinkle, for a place that should pretty much have all the wrinkles ironed out by now, I found the soda machine by the ladies room was working, but had no iced tea for me to have with my breakfast, so it was a long trek to the Registration Building every morning to use the soda machine there. Speaking of wrinkles, Bill reminded me that this would be the anniversary of my 50th year at Wildwood, although I have no independent corroboration of that, since the first pictures I can find of us camping are from 1959. But it's a legend in the family that our first year out there was when I was 4 years old in 1958, so I celebrated this as my 50th year, in spite of a lack of proof. During the off-season, the park maintenance crew tried to level off the trail from the park to the beach hill, ostensibly as an improvement, but they covered it with sharp treacherous stones which cut right through my beach shoes, so that for the first time in my life, I was reduced to taking "the fuddy duddy hill" for old geezers and little old ladies instead, and leaving the trail to the young whipper-snappers and daredevils with sturdy shoes. I couldn't scare up a WIFI signal with my laptop anywhere in the park, so I finally asked them at the Registration Building, and they admitted there was none, and in fact, didn't know of any in the surrounding towns either. As long as I was there, I asked about movies, since I hadn't seen any mention of them, and thought they might have discontinued this feature. Oh no, they assured me, they have them every Wednesday night in the parking lot. When I pointed out that there was no schedule to show what movies they were playing in which weeks, they seemed blissfully unconcerned, which is the kind of entertainment "pig in a poke" that I wouldn't expect to catch on in this information-saturated society nowadays.
It seems that on Tuesdays, they send the bulldozer around to re-allocate the picnic tables, so there's only one on each site, and on Thursdays, they have an enormous tractor that goes around and cuts the grass, which is a new one on me, and don't forget, I've been going there for 50 years, give or take. In a funny (not "ha-ha" funny) development, I had devised an elaborate contraption whereby I could secure my wallet in the car, which is a hatchback and has no trunk, and without keeping the doors locked, which is a nuisance when you use your car as a pantry, as I do. It involved chains and padlocks and lots of metal grating, and when I finally got it all set up, and was ready to put my wallet in there for safekeeping, this was the first I realized that I had left my wallet in the hotel suitcase, which had gone home with Bill on Sunday night. I still had my camping wallet with my vacation money, but no credit cards or checks, or my drivers license, for that matter. I couldn't even go to the bank and get more money, and I was faced with the daunting prospect of filling the car with gas and buying myself dinner all week, plus supplies if I needed any, with just the money I brought with me. I thought I was doing okay in the $5 range at McDonald's and the pizzeria, but when I blew $8.15 at the deli and another $11.10 at the Italian bistro, plus $20 at the gas station and $10 for camera batteries, things were starting to look pretty bleak on the financial horizon. On Thursday, I called Bill and asked him to make sure he brought along the suitcase when he came back out on Saturday, so at least I would have my license to drive home with, but Bill who is nothing if not gallant, left work in the middle of the day and drove 100 miles back out to Wildwood to bring me my wallet, like the Cavalry riding to the rescue of the beleaguered outpost. He joined me for another nice, if unexpected, day at the beach, and then we had dinner at the nearby Greek Island Restaurant, where they have the nerve to charge $9 for what is essentially two small pieces of fried cheese, which would certainly not have been on my budget plan without Bill picking up the tab. Believe me, I'm sure the President's economic advisers were glad that Bill came back with my wallet, because the next morning, I rushed out to the stores and spent about $150 on things I didn't need, with the giddy abandon of a prisoner who has been given a reprieve by the governor.
Friday morning, I realized that I still had more firewood than I needed for one last campfire that night, so I carried a bunch that had been scavenged from other campsites, and left it on the platform up the hill, for whoever would be camping there next to enjoy. When campers showed up at that site after dinner, I noticed that someone else had already come along and filched the purloined firewood before the new people arrived, which unfortunately proves that there is no honor among firewood thieves nowadays, that's for sure. Then on Saturday morning, I was trying to get an early start on packing things up, but instead ended up trudging around the park to three different soda machines, lost $1.50 in them, and still got no iced tea to have with my Twinkies. I was reduced to making warm instant lemonade from a mix instead, which had little enough to recommend it, and had just barely started on my packing when Bill showed up really early to help, and brought iced tea with him. We packed up the campsite and checked out, then spent a lovely last day at the beach, although a little more crowded than we would have preferred. We stopped at the gas station before starting for home, and because I had spent so much time using the lever on the floor to open the hatchback during the week, when I pulled up to the pump, I inadvertently opened the hatchback instead of the gas cap, which must have surprised the heck out of the man trying to pump the gas. We got home without incident, and had a nice dinner at the diner, and after we unloaded the cars and I was sorting through my belongings, I discovered that I came home with nothing but $8.75 left of my vacation money, so that's my idea of a good vacation, and a 50th anniversary that I can live with.
I'm happy to report that I have returned safe and sound from Vacation Land, and lived to tell the tale, which is always my favorite way to travel. Actually, my vacation started early this year, because we opened vacation presents on Thursday instead of waiting until Saturday. We both got some practical vacation items, like sunscreen and beach towels, as well as other interesting items of a non-vacation-related variety, but none the less appreciated for all that. I'm afraid I jinxed Bill by getting him what I thought was an adorable cat-shaped gel pack, called a Boo Boo Buddy, which you put in the freezer and then apply to an injury to make it feel better. It only took until Sunday for him to walk into a tree root and hurt his toe, so I guess the Boo Boo Buddy did its job of causing an injury in order to make itself useful. Even though both cars were all packed and ready to go, the check-in time at the park is 3 PM, so there's no point in getting there too early, so we didn't leave until after 11:00, and soon had reason to regret it. We got stuck in the worst traffic in the Bronx, which turned out not to be road construction or accidents, but just too much traffic, and we couldn't even use the walkie-talkies to keep us company between both cars, because some surly truck driver kept breaking in on the same frequency. Later, Bill said that he checked his GPS device and found that we had been on the road for 47 minutes, traveled 10 miles, and averaged a whopping 4.5 MPH during that time. Fortunately, the problem cleared up after the bridge, and the rest of the way was smooth sailing in comparison.
We finally got to the park, hot and bedraggled, but late enough that they let us check right in and go to our sites, which it seemed were the only two open campsites out of 250 in the whole place. Alert readers may recall that I reserve the site behind mine, so that the previous campers don't erect their tent too close to the back of my site, but one thing I wasn't expecting this time around, was that the people on the corner were using my campsite to park their car on. I had to leave my car over on the other side by the gully, because the way they had everything set up, if they couldn't drive out through my site, their only other option would be to drive over their own tent. (I will not say that we did anything to chase them, but I will admit to unseemly rejoicing when they left on Sunday.) We tossed up both tents in a hurry and left everything else for later, and even Bill would agree that going down to the beach for the first time in a year was a special treat, and one that never fails to delight. The weather was glorious and the water was exceptional, and the cheese fries were just as we remembered them. All the aggravation of being stuck in traffic, and encroaching neighbors at the site, seemed to all drain away in the sun, surf, sand and gentle breezes that have been a tonic to weary souls the world over since time immemorial, and I ought to know.
Later, we dropped our wet things at the site and headed to our next destination, the Comfort Inn on Route 112 in Medford, which is just the latest in a series of hotel experiments over the years for us. It turned out to be very nice and inexpensive, especially compared to the more tourist-oriented hotels in Riverhead where we usually stay, and usually with very mixed results. Bill liked the flat panel TV with many of his favorite cable channels from home, and since he brought his laptop, he was able to make use of their in-room WIFI as well. Since the tavern at the hotel was closed for renovations, we had dinner at the nearby Metropolis Diner just down the road. (Here, I would be remiss if I didn't mention my favorite menu item from the diner, which I found at the top of their Finger Foods section, and was described as a Crock of Chili. I can't help but think that their idea of "finger foods" and mine must be completely different, because eating chili with your fingers is a concept which I hope will never catch on, at least in my lifetime.) In the morning, they provide a wonderful breakfast buffet, with a tempting assortment of muffins, bagels, French toast, waffles, rolls, fruit, eggs, cereal, coffee and juice, plus a charming alcove to enjoy it in. We considered the hotel a real find, especially after some of the duds that we stayed in previously. The funniest thing that happened was when Bill brought in the GPS from the car for safekeeping, and it woke us up in the middle of the night, shouting: "In point two miles, turn left! Turn left!" I said to Bill that the poor Nuvi lady was having nightmares of being stuck in traffic in the Bronx for an hour, and I can't say that I blame her.
We went back to the beach on Sunday, with more beautiful conditions, and not at all crowded. This gave Bill the opportunity to rescue what he thought was a drowned G.I. Joe doll out of the rocks, but turned out instead to be professional wrestler "HBK" Shawn Michaels of the WWE. He was none the worse for wear, except for a broken finger, although when Bill found him, his head was turned completely around to the back, which as wrestling moves go, probably doesn't have much to recommend it. Bill went home in the afternoon, so that he could go back to work and hold down the fort during the week, and did his usual bang-up job at it. I set up the rest of the site with the tables and chairs and shelves that I need, and even though it was crowded at the park early on the weekend, I had no trouble identifying the spy site, which this year was handily located right along with me on the inside circle of C Section. A camp site full of spies is easily recognized, because it always has a tent but no kitchen, no sign of occupancy no matter what time of day or night, no food or related products on the picnic table or grill, no indication of what the supposed occupants could be doing all day (for instance, fishing rods, kayaks, backpacks, bicycles or the like) and no car. It wasn't until after 10 PM that the spies came back to the site, and they turned out to be a young couple with two rambunctious boys, which I personally think it a brilliant disguise for espionage agents.
By Monday afternoon, the spies and I were all that was left in C Section, and they were gone every morning by 7 AM and didn't return until late at night. It didn't take long to discover what I referred to as "The 7:30 Deer," because I kept bumping into them in the street behind my campsite when I would walk around the park after dinner, and they showed up every night like clockwork. At that time of day, it's still perfectly light out, and the interesting thing about deer at Wildwood is that there is nothing for them to blend in with, because that distinctive faun color stands out no matter where they are. By the time I thought to bring my camera with me, everyone else had spotted them also, and so a couple of bad, blurry pictures are all I have to show for it, as they retreated back into the woods from the surging humanity. One day when I was walking back from the beach, I stepped over a twig that looked like a snake, and it occurred to me for the first time, that there are no snakes at Wildwood, and I had never seen or heard of any, after all these years out there. I think it was the very next day, when I spotted a tiny snake that had been run over in the road behind my site, which as bizarre coincidences go, ranks right up there with clockwork deer. So I thought this was an unusual year for wildlife, with a few new wrinkles left in the old campground still.
In another new wrinkle, for a place that should pretty much have all the wrinkles ironed out by now, I found the soda machine by the ladies room was working, but had no iced tea for me to have with my breakfast, so it was a long trek to the Registration Building every morning to use the soda machine there. Speaking of wrinkles, Bill reminded me that this would be the anniversary of my 50th year at Wildwood, although I have no independent corroboration of that, since the first pictures I can find of us camping are from 1959. But it's a legend in the family that our first year out there was when I was 4 years old in 1958, so I celebrated this as my 50th year, in spite of a lack of proof. During the off-season, the park maintenance crew tried to level off the trail from the park to the beach hill, ostensibly as an improvement, but they covered it with sharp treacherous stones which cut right through my beach shoes, so that for the first time in my life, I was reduced to taking "the fuddy duddy hill" for old geezers and little old ladies instead, and leaving the trail to the young whipper-snappers and daredevils with sturdy shoes. I couldn't scare up a WIFI signal with my laptop anywhere in the park, so I finally asked them at the Registration Building, and they admitted there was none, and in fact, didn't know of any in the surrounding towns either. As long as I was there, I asked about movies, since I hadn't seen any mention of them, and thought they might have discontinued this feature. Oh no, they assured me, they have them every Wednesday night in the parking lot. When I pointed out that there was no schedule to show what movies they were playing in which weeks, they seemed blissfully unconcerned, which is the kind of entertainment "pig in a poke" that I wouldn't expect to catch on in this information-saturated society nowadays.
It seems that on Tuesdays, they send the bulldozer around to re-allocate the picnic tables, so there's only one on each site, and on Thursdays, they have an enormous tractor that goes around and cuts the grass, which is a new one on me, and don't forget, I've been going there for 50 years, give or take. In a funny (not "ha-ha" funny) development, I had devised an elaborate contraption whereby I could secure my wallet in the car, which is a hatchback and has no trunk, and without keeping the doors locked, which is a nuisance when you use your car as a pantry, as I do. It involved chains and padlocks and lots of metal grating, and when I finally got it all set up, and was ready to put my wallet in there for safekeeping, this was the first I realized that I had left my wallet in the hotel suitcase, which had gone home with Bill on Sunday night. I still had my camping wallet with my vacation money, but no credit cards or checks, or my drivers license, for that matter. I couldn't even go to the bank and get more money, and I was faced with the daunting prospect of filling the car with gas and buying myself dinner all week, plus supplies if I needed any, with just the money I brought with me. I thought I was doing okay in the $5 range at McDonald's and the pizzeria, but when I blew $8.15 at the deli and another $11.10 at the Italian bistro, plus $20 at the gas station and $10 for camera batteries, things were starting to look pretty bleak on the financial horizon. On Thursday, I called Bill and asked him to make sure he brought along the suitcase when he came back out on Saturday, so at least I would have my license to drive home with, but Bill who is nothing if not gallant, left work in the middle of the day and drove 100 miles back out to Wildwood to bring me my wallet, like the Cavalry riding to the rescue of the beleaguered outpost. He joined me for another nice, if unexpected, day at the beach, and then we had dinner at the nearby Greek Island Restaurant, where they have the nerve to charge $9 for what is essentially two small pieces of fried cheese, which would certainly not have been on my budget plan without Bill picking up the tab. Believe me, I'm sure the President's economic advisers were glad that Bill came back with my wallet, because the next morning, I rushed out to the stores and spent about $150 on things I didn't need, with the giddy abandon of a prisoner who has been given a reprieve by the governor.
Friday morning, I realized that I still had more firewood than I needed for one last campfire that night, so I carried a bunch that had been scavenged from other campsites, and left it on the platform up the hill, for whoever would be camping there next to enjoy. When campers showed up at that site after dinner, I noticed that someone else had already come along and filched the purloined firewood before the new people arrived, which unfortunately proves that there is no honor among firewood thieves nowadays, that's for sure. Then on Saturday morning, I was trying to get an early start on packing things up, but instead ended up trudging around the park to three different soda machines, lost $1.50 in them, and still got no iced tea to have with my Twinkies. I was reduced to making warm instant lemonade from a mix instead, which had little enough to recommend it, and had just barely started on my packing when Bill showed up really early to help, and brought iced tea with him. We packed up the campsite and checked out, then spent a lovely last day at the beach, although a little more crowded than we would have preferred. We stopped at the gas station before starting for home, and because I had spent so much time using the lever on the floor to open the hatchback during the week, when I pulled up to the pump, I inadvertently opened the hatchback instead of the gas cap, which must have surprised the heck out of the man trying to pump the gas. We got home without incident, and had a nice dinner at the diner, and after we unloaded the cars and I was sorting through my belongings, I discovered that I came home with nothing but $8.75 left of my vacation money, so that's my idea of a good vacation, and a 50th anniversary that I can live with.
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 7:47 PM
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