June 22-26           Cape May, New Jersey

Cape May has captivated us.  We love the marina, the weather, the town, and the people.  We have decided to stay a week before leaving for Atlantic City and then New York.  We will have plenty of time for our planned arrival on June 30 at Liberty Landing Marina in Jersey City, New Jersey, located across from Lower Manhattan and near the Statue of Liberty.  We will use the time in Cape May to complete the seat change project on the bridge.  Our three seats behind the helm area are too low for good visibility through the plastic curtains on the front.  David has bought lengths of aluminum pipe which he will cut to fit over the existing stands to make extensions.  Using a hand saw and a small electric saw, he says it can be easily accomplished.    I plan to complete the exterior cleaning job that was not done properly in Philadelphia.  Contracted to clean the boat at an exorbitant fee, the dockhand merely washed it (and not too well).  We were visiting with a neighboring boater when he announced that the job was finished and replied affirmatively to my queries about his work.  Unfortunately, I did not leave and inspect his work before paying him.  I’ve learned another lesson about trusting supposed expertise of others and now I am doing the work that he did not!

Our stay will not be all work.  We rode our bikes to the Washington Mall with its charming shops and restaurants.  Unexpectedly, I found some unique gift items that we purchased for Christmas presents.  An open air trolley ride introduced us to Cape May and its history, including the famous Cape May Lighthouse, still guiding vessels safely into Delaware Bay from the Atlantic Ocean.  The Mall has a tiny Dairy Queen located in a charming two-story wooden building painted in various shades of pink.  Their menu was small—ice cream products and hot dogs.  No hamburgers, French fries, chicken or steak fingers, the staples of Texas DQs.

We continue to marvel at the quantity of beautiful Victorian style homes and the profusion of hydrangeas which surrounds them.  These gorgeous flowers, white, blue, pink, deep rose, and lavender, are plate sized and massed in large bushes. They provide a horticultural display that is worthy of any Botanical garden.

The bridge seat project necessitated several more bike rides to the hardware store (we never seem to get everything on the first visit).  The sidewalks and curb cuts provide a traffic free route although we have to watch carefully for surfaces that are not level due to the eruptions of large roots from old trees. Cape May has many trees which border almost every street.  We are now seeing beautiful, stately, purple-leafed beeches, indigenous to the Northeast, and one of our favorites.

Saturday was spent completing the bridge seat project.  It was slow-going but was finally finished and  looked great.  We celebrated with dinner of take-out pizza from the restaurant across from the marina and watched a fiery sunset from the bridge. 

Sunday was a good day to relax and get ready to leave for Atlantic City.  The boat was clean and beautiful, the seats were perfect, and the route was plotted on the GPS.  We had made reservations for dinner at Panico’s, a local favorite.  Since it does not get dark until after nine o’clock, we felt safe in riding our bikes to this lovely little restaurant.  Panico’s is located in a small wooden structure that was formerly a church.  It retains the steeple, high ceilings, wooden floors, and tall slender windows of the original.  Pews have been replaced by small tables and a wood-burning oven for pizza (almost every restaurant in Cape May seems to have that item on its menu).  The food was Italian-influenced and very, very good.

  Afterwards, we paid a final visit to Washington Mall, crowded with people looking into the shops, sitting on the benches, eating ice cream, and strolling in the cool evening temperature. Looking into the galleries, we found a lovely framed print that we thought to be perfect for our middle stateroom.  The price was right but there was a problem of transportation to the boat.  It was too large to carry on the bikes and the distance to the boat was too far to walk.  The proprietor told us she would deliver it to us when she left the shop at    11: 00 PM.  Now that is customer service!