Last Day

On Thursday, the last official day of our roadtrip (we still need to drive back to Mass and return the beast), we drove from Ocean City, MD back to Stony Point, NY.  We opted to take the ferry across the Delaware Bay rather than the longer way around which would include driving on the notoriously heavy traffic I-95 and the NJ Turnpike.  We figured this way would be a little more scenic as well.

We started off kind of slow, but that was intentional.  We didn’t want to get to the New York City area until late evening, after rush hour was over.  We started driving up the coast and immediately crossed into Delaware.  Until we got to the ferry, the majority of the drive was through beach towns, with shops selling saltwater taffy, miniature golf on every corner, cheesy souvenir shops, motels, and just about every other typical store you would find in a beach community.  There were only a small few breaks from civilization when we crossed through state parks and other wildlife preserves.  Fortunately for us, this is the shoulder season and traffic was not an issue.  Had it been summertime the hour drive from Ocean City to the ferry would have probably been better than two hours for the 30 mile drive. 

Before getting on the ferry, we made one stop at one of the last surviving Futuro houses.  Futuro houses were designed and built by a Finnish architect back in the late 1960’s.  They are oval in size and kind of look like flying sauces, and they were built out of fiberglass and plastic.  They were designed to be lightweight and portable.  The houses were easy to assemble and they could be mobile.  The thought was that in time, everyone would have more leisure time to spend on vacation away from home.  One could pretty much pack up your house and take it with you, assembling it wherever you may be.  The houses could comfortably accommodate 8 people.  The idea was that the house would be mass produced and cheap enough that everyone on earth could own one.  Unfortunately, likely due to the oil crisis in the early 70’s plastic became very expensive and the idea never really caught on.  Today there are estimated to be only about 50 remaining of less than 100 that were originally built.  This house was pretty cool. We found out about it from geocaching and it appears that someone may live in it.  We pulled up next to it, checked it out and took some pictures.

We then drove to the ferry, which was less than 10 minutes away.  We did not have reservations but this time of year we didn’t think that would be a problem. We were right.  After paying for the ferry, we got in line and waited.  We somehow lucked out on this one.  There are only two ferries making the crossing this time of year and the crossing takes about an hour and a half.  We somehow arrived only 10 minutes before the next ferry was to depart.  Had we been much later we would have had to wait another 2 hours before the next ferry was available.  We would have found something to do because we were not in the mood for the NJ Turnpike and I95 through Delaware.  The crossing was pretty rough, likely due to the wind and the rain from the night before.  We ended up staying in the car for the whole trip, we just reclined the seats and relaxed the whole time.  This reminded us of the last time we were on a semi-long ferry trip in choppy waters.  A few years ago we took a high speed car ferry from Nova Scotia to Bar Harbor, ME.  That trip was not good.  The high speed crossing was advertised as 2 ½ hours (much quicker than the conventional ferry ride of 6 hours), and much shorter than driving between the two points, which at the time was 9+ hours.  On that particular trip we recalled that by our estimates, 90% of the people on the boat were getting sick.  Jackie recalled being in a stall in the bathroom.  She remembered people coming in, seeing no empty stalls and just getting sick in the sinks and on the floor.  This was one of the reasons we stayed in the car this time, we did not want to witness any of that.  Once we arrived at Cape May, NJ we were hungry.  We headed for a small deli where we got a chicken parm sandwich and a roast chicken with gorgonzola cheese and roasted peppers sandwich.  We took the sandwich out to a place in Cape May called sunset beach.  Sunset beach is somewhat unique in that it is one of the few places on the east coast where you can watch the sun set over water.  Also at Sunset Beach, is an old shipwreck just off the coast.  You can see the ship sitting there in the water, right where it rested in 1926.  The ship was originally built as an experimental ship during World War I.  After several trans-Atlantic trips it was found to be impractical for its intended use.  The ship was sold and was going to be used as a ferry dock in Cape May.  During a storm in 1926 the ship broke free of its moorings and came to rest about 150 feet off of Sunset Beach, where it remains to this day.  While we were taking pictures and elderly gentleman who was sitting in his car approached Chris with a picture of the boat taken in 1926.  We don’t think that he took the picture, but we suspect he may have been alive to see the boat back when it was afloat.  We took a picture of his picture for all to see.

Besides the sunken ship you can see the very choppy waters.

Sunset Beach is also unique in that you can find “Cap May Diamonds” washed up on the beach there.  Cape May Diamonds are quartz pebbles found on the beaches are pieces of rocks that are thought to have originated in the upper Delaware River (upstate NY).  The rocks fall into the river and are washed down and worn smooth in the process.  Some scientists claim that that this process of the rocks washing down the river takes thousands of years.  The rocks are all over the place and are really nice looking.  We actually collected a large shopping bag full.  Who knows what we will do with those rocks.

After leaving Cape May we started our drive home.  The quickest way would be to jump on the Garden State Parkway and drive about 3 hours north into Rockland County, NY where our pets were waiting for us.  But if we left at this time, roughly 4 PM, we would surely hit traffic further up.  So we attempted to go to a winery and a brewery.  We walked into the winery and the person working there was extremely rude, so we left without trying anything.  That’s too bad for them because we would have certainly bought more than 2 bottles.  The brewery, which was located in a warehouse near the airport was open for bottling, but not for tasting or touring.  So we struck out twice.  We then got on the road.  Again, instead of jumping on the parkway, we took back roads up the coast until just south of Atlantic City.  We found the beach towns of south Jersey to be much nicer than most beach towns.  Instead of the cheesy touristy type stores, the stores in the beach areas were higher class.  Instead of motels on every corner there were upscale homes on every block.  We made another stop, again at a virtual geocache, at a shrine that has been maintained over the last 40+ years to a house that had been lost to a storm back in 1962.  Apparently after the storm destroyed the home (and every other home on the ocean side of the street) back in 1962, the family, who still owns the property today, built a shrine to their lost home and each year they add more “stuff” to the shrine.

Finally, we got back on the parkway and headed for New York.  We would make one more stop for cheap Jersey gas on the parkway, just because the beast loves us so much, it took another $100 worth.  We got to Stony Point and we finally cracked open that Rocket Girl that we had been carrying with us for so long.