A trip to the coast

Monday, September 16th.

We woke up this morning to discover that we were not the only ones to have made the van our home for the night. Our legs and ankels bore witness of the bites of many a mosquito. But since that was too late to be remedied we let it be, and instead had our breakfast at our little picnic table and took a morning shower. We then spent the morning updating the webpage and had to cough up $6 for the use of the modem jack in the campsite office. Considering that we dial up to a 1-800 number which doesn't cost them a penny it seemed a bit much to ask. But these campground-owners generally didn't give much away for free.

We then got on highway 70 and headed for the Atlantic coast to see if we could find Eleanora, a somewhat distant relative on the Danish side of Dan's family. We were unable to contact her by phone, so we would have to just show up on her doorstep. We found Bricktown, NJ, without much trouble. To find the street she lives on we had to enlist the help of the guy at Domino's Pizza, figuring that he would know his way around town. He actually didn't know the street, but was very friendly and helpful and called up one of his drivers to get directions for us. And so we found Eleanora's house.

She wasn't home when we got there. We talked to her neighbor who promised to leave a message with her that we'd been there, and we left her a note saying that we'd come back later in the day. We headed out into Bricktown and drove around for a while until we found a barbershop where we could get our hair cut. That successfully completed we headed back to Eleanora's house.

We found her at home, just about to have her "Happy Hour" afternoon drink. So she invited us to join her for that. She turned out to be a very lively and jovial older lady, and we had a nice chat about family relations and about the present state of Denmark and she shared some of her wisdom on the importance of friends and the sadness in outliving them, and of her thoughts about family. She envied us our youth and wished us lots of luck and good times on our further travels. We explained to her the idea behind our cross-country expedition and she agreed to sit for a sofa-picture.

When she said goodbye to us she looked around and said with a wink of the eye that she hoped that all her neighbors saw her out there with two such handsome young men :)

After saying goodbye to her we headed northbound along the coast and stopped off at the beach feel the sand between our toes and gaze out over the Atlantic Ocean.

We then headed further up along the coast, planning to camp at Allaire State Park. The registration office was closed and there was a big sign in front of the campground entrance permitting "registered campers only". So it looked like we were out of luck and would have to find a parking lot to sleep in again. However, we decided to be stubborn and check out the campsite anyway. And sure enough, on the bulletin board inside the campground was a sign saying that late arriving campers could just camp out and register in the morning. So we did just that.

We headed out for dinner at Tony's Pizzeria in a nearby town. The restaurant was divided into a take-out counter and a dining room, but the only difference seemed to be the pseudo-Italian decorations on the wall. We ate in the dining room but were still served our food on paper plates :) But the pizza was great, there were free refills on the root beer and the waitress wasn't bad looking either, so we pretty much had it made :)