Vacation Day 4 - A Busy "Free" Day

Sunday was sort of our wild card day.  We didn't have any firm plans but figured we had enough to fill it.  We tried to get up early-ish because we were headed back to the boardwalk and didn't want to have to battle for parking like we did previously.  Our plan was to get Jacob a good gluten-free breakfast and then get one last walk around.  

Parking was a non-event (note to self, get there before 10am), and the breakfast joint was just a block over from the main drag, and just a bit off the beach.  We walked through that quaint Penny Lane alley to get there.  It turned out to be rather overpriced, but the food was good and it felt important to get Jacob a good meal since he'd struggled with food for a lot of the trip.  He had an amazing French toast with strawberries, Carter had giant chocolate chip pancakes, I had breakfast tacos, and Craig had oatmeal and toast.  Aside from it feeling too expensive for breakfast food ($6 juice and a $7 fruit cup?!), it was a nice meal.

We walked around a bit afterward, first stopping down along the beach where I ran out for a couple boardwalk photos and one more shell check.  

I didn't find much--I was mostly curious to see if the tides exposed anything or the water level was different--but I did see this section of sand that looked extra interesting for some reason...sparkly, perhaps?  I didn't realize how interesting until I looked at the picture later, since it had been rather bright when I took it.  If you zoom in there are tiny translucent rocks, maybe even glass.  It's really amazing.

We stopped back in the toy shop we quickly visited a couple days earlier, and Craig got an old school candy bar he saw, and Carter got a new magic trick (a coin slider). 

We walked back to the van and I stopped in one little shop that seemed to have some fun blown glass items.  There was one thing I was eyeing up, but I just couldn't spend the money!  I took one more shot of the iconic water tower, and off we went.

Our next stop was the Nike store (again), mostly because Jacob apparently didn't have enough underwear to get through the rest of the trip.  I don't know why he has so little, although I guess with sports he changes it more often than most people.  He gets his laundry done every 3-4 days on average so I guess he forgot being gone for five days might be an issue.  Our next stop was mini golf.  There was a fun looking one along our route and we figured it would be a good way to end the Delaware leg of the trip.  It was located at a place called the Sea Shell Shop (say that three times fast) and the golf part was appropriately called "Shell We Golf".
 

They had a lot of fun theming!

They had some fun facts along the course, and it had some interesting holes like the volcano above.  It was a challenging round, though.  We all seemed to have hot and cold spells.  Carter and I both had a couple holes in one but also stunk big time on a number of holes.  Jacob won, but Craig and I weren't far behind.  We had a lot of fun, though.  On this course the 18th hole is a normal one, but the 19th is the one that takes your ball.  Here Jacob was trying to figure out if it was a sure thing or if it was possible for it to roll back.

The boys got fun pirate-themed balls as their souvenir, and then we headed into the shop.  The Sea Shell Shop was a pretty amazing place.  They had so much stuff!  There was a lot of gifty stuff, a ton of beachy decor, lots of trinkets and souvenirs, a bunch of toys, hermit crabs, and yes, shells.  There were so many fun things.  If I wasn't against adding more stuffed animals to the mix, Carter would own a stuffed seagull on a stiff leash (almost like the old invisible dog ones) holding a french fry in its mouth.  Jacob inexplicably wanted a beach themed lamp like they have at Old Key West, but alas, it was far too expensive.  But much to my delight, they had one of the glass things I was eyeing up along the boardwalk for half the price!  It's maybe 3-4 inches tall, with a blue jellyfish inside.  And the jellyfish glows in the dark!  I just thought it was pretty and very "me", and it goes nicely with my blue glass.  And for $6.99?  Yes, please!

We did a quick Wawa gas stop (at which I grabbed two more pretzels--they are so good and cheap!) and then we went to Sports on the Beach, the sports facility we had stopped at previously.  This time the boys went out to the baseball fields to hit some blitz balls.  It was a pretty hot day so I hung out in the dugout.  It's a really nice facility, so huge, and I can only imagine what it's like hosting giant tournaments.

Jacob batting

Carter batting

Playing catch

Since they had WiFi I talked to my mom a bit on FaceTime while they were playing, since I hadn't really caught them up on Jacob's crazy health stuff or the details of the trip itself, outside of a couple vague mentions on Facebook.  They were headed out, though, so it was a pretty short chat.  We moved over to the basketball courts after that so Jacob could get some shots up.    

He struggled a bit that day--maybe it was the hoops, maybe the heat, maybe just all of the health issues creeping up on him.  He's been working hard to get back to playing shape.  It's been a process, but he's getting there.

I had to grab this picture on the way back out.  There were SO many turkey vultures sitting around the park.  Usually it's geese, and they had those too, but there were turkey vultures everywhere in this one spot.  They were on top of the batting cages and all along the water.  They also flew around, which was a little freaky.

We went a bit further along our route heading toward Dover and went to the other Kickin' Chicken location on the way to get a later lunch.  This time Craig and Carter both had the fried chicken sandwich like I had the previous day, I had a chicken cheesesteak, and Jacob had his same four pieces of fried chicken again--which he said was seasoned a lot better this time.  We all enjoyed our meals once again.  Then it was off for the long drive north.  The downside to Delaware was that it was a lot more out of the way from our final destination in downstate New York than the Jersey Shore would have been.  That meant we had a long haul up through Delaware, across into New Jersey, and finally over into the Catskill region of downstate New York.  We struggled to find a good gluten-free option the entire time and finally ended up at a Jersey Mike's in Paramus, NJ, on the world's most annoying divided highway that involves annoying turnaround ramps to get to the other side.  I remember it from when we went to the IKEA nearby on the way back from our last Jersey Shore trip.  We got in there less than an hour before closing and I felt a little bad because they were clearly trying to clean up the store until we got there.  Other people came in after so I felt less bad, but we were the only eat-in folks.  After that, we had a bit more driving before another later hotel arrival, but at least this one was a nice, reliable Holiday Inn Express!  This room reminded us a lot of the weird high-ceiling one we had in Ithaca a few years ago.  This one didn't have the high windows, but the ceiling was oddly tall!  Bonus points that it was the last room on the first floor by the door where our van was parked.  Apparently we had a harder time settling down that night because the boys were up late, watching some Mysteries of the Museum show until like 11:30, whereas I could hardly keep my eyes open by 11.  Last hotel sleep of the trip, with big fun (or so we thought) the next day!