A day at the beach

Tuesday, September 17th.
Exterior.
The Ford Club Wagon is parked in a secluded campsite in Allaire State Park, NJ. The forest around it is quiet, but on the inside the van is hopping to the upbeat tunes of some newly bought ska music.

Today turned out to be a vacation day at the beach -- and what a day it was! We left our campsite at around 10am this morning and headed a little bit south, back to Pt. Pleasant beach, which we passed last night. After adding two Dunkin' Donuts (our first on the trip!) and a cup of coffee to our granola breakfast we found a parking spot right by the beach. Pt. Pleasant bore every marking of a place overrun by tourists all summer (and rightfully so!) but at this time of year it was comfortably roomy -- yet still a great place. The sun finally returned, and shone all day from a clear sky. And we shared the huge open beach with less than 20 other people. A restaurant on the beachfront had planted some palm trees in the sand which really gave the beach that touch of the Caribbean that just made it look great. So we spread out our towels and set about relaxing in the sun as best we knew. We later took on the huge waves crashing against the shore, swimming with them inland or charging up against them -- and still getting washed inland :) We later found the sign prohibiting swimming when no lifeguard was on duty, which sort of explained why we were the only people in the water...

When our first three hours on the parking meter were up we decided to drive into town to look for some lunch. When we got back to the van there were several dads around us stomping furiously around their cars waving parking tickets in the air. Which made us appreciate our decision to spend a few quarters on parking...

Driving into town we spotted a restaurant that looked like a good place for lunch, parked, and walked up there -- only to find it closed. But... right next to it was a music store, so we overheard our hungry stomachs and went browsing through rows and rows of great music instead. That added some some new reggae and ska to our collection, as well as another Red Hot Chili Peppers album. After a dive into an antique store Jens also came up with an old 48-state flag to add to our collection of old stuff (or junk, for those who prefer that word...).

We remembered that we had some pizza left over from the night before so we added some soft drinks and some fresh pineapple to it and figured we'd call that lunch. So we drove back down to the beach, unloaded the couch and wheeled it down on a concrete pad bordering the sand and ate our lunch there. We finished off our beach vacation by hanging out at the beach for another hour or so and then headed back to sleep another night at the Allaire State Park campground.