Kory and I woke up about 5:30 this morning (2:30 Seattle time). The house was quiet so we headed on down to the nearest Starbucks to have a cup of coffee and I checked my e-mail. We were back by 8am and still no one was awake. I took off to a Wal-mart hoping to find a battery charger for my camera, as I’ve managed to lose the one I packed for this trip. The GPS said I was going to Wal-Mart but it ended up being a Sam’s club (Wal-mart’s version of Costco), so I just bought a new pocket camera instead. They are disposable items in our house as I blow through them pretty fast and we can’t be on this vacation without a camera!
When I got home, Connie and Kaleb were finally awake. Connie had been doing yard work a few weeks ago in preparation for our visit, and she got a tick in the back of her leg and didn’t know it. She came down with Lyme disease and has been pretty sick as a result. Her yard hasn’t been mowed since then and many of her trees were very overgrown, so Kory and I got out some yard tools and got to work. I started trimming the trees and Kory mowed the lawn. Kaleb came out and started trimming some hedges and sweeping the walk, until he found out poison ivy was in the area and his enthusiasm dwindled. We all worked for several hours cutting and hauling branches (see photo below) and getting the yard looking a bit more kept up. Kaleb kept reminding me he was on vacation and I reminded him he’s never on vacation from doing something nice for someone. The worst part was it was so hot and humid and we had to wear socks and long pants because of the ticks, and I don’t think I’ve ever sweat so much in all my life, but the best part was the neighbor’s swimming pool we enjoyed afterwards.
I had memories of a cool historic village Connie took me to years ago and I wanted Kaleb to see it. I’d checked on the Internet before we came here and saw it was in a city called Millville, south of where Connie lives. For whatever reason, when we took off to go there, I didn’t bring the address and couldn’t remember the exact name of the place. I thought Connie would know what I was talking about, but as I’m quickly discovering, her memory isn’t what it used to be. We drove 30 miles late in the day to go take a peek at this place, and when we got to that city, there were no signs directing us there, Connie had no idea why we were there, and I was kicking myself I had no address to plug into the GPS. Even the GPS didn’t know about that place. So much for that big idea.
I decided the time should just be earmarked as a “Discover New Jersery” road trip and we stopped at every town on the way back to see what it looked like. Every place had a Wal-Mart so we stopped there too, just to see if they had anything cool or unusual, and we weren’t disappointed. We found crab-flavored popcorn. Incredible.
We treated Connie to dinner out at an historic building in a nearby town called Franklinville. Connie’s maiden name was Franklin, so we couldn’t resist. It was a fancy food restaurant and our waiter’s name was Benjamin. We just thought that was too funny because the restaurant was called the Franklinville Inn, and the area was named after Ben Franklin himself. He used to stop at that Inn on his way to the shore, back in the day. We were given a whole history lesson on the building and that’s where we found out there is an unopened bottle of some type of alcohol sitting in the bar since 1890, which we had to go see. Kaleb’s history lesson for the day didn’t exactly include the details I was expecting, but it was just fine with him.
Last night Robbie told me he’d come by about 7:30 tonight so I could see him again, so we rushed home so as not to miss him. Unfortunately, he wasn’t feeling well enough today to travel, so the rush was for naught. We may need to drive over to him if he’s feeling better in a few days. It breaks my heart he’s in such bad shape, but that’s partly why I timed this trip like I did because I know time may be short for him and his mom.
The headlines today were all about the earthquake yesterday and now today the news is the hurricane that’s heading our way on Sunday. I’m praying it doesn’t make it this far north as we have travel plans for Sunday to head down to Maryland, but we’ll see. For now, we’re fine, and tomorrow, it’s New York, baby, New York!
No comments:
Post a Comment