No boat travel.
We left the boat in Marineland, Florida for a road trip to New Jersey. Renting a car in Marineland proved inconvenient since the nearest agency is located about 20 miles away from the marina. Having packed all but the cold food the night before, we picked up the car Monday morning and were finally on the road to New Jersey by 11:30.
Since we have traveled the Florida-to-New Jersey route by car previously, the trip was mostly familiar. We did see one noteworthy site however.
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| Clark dubbed this bridge near Jacksonville, Florida "the bowtie bridge" |
Weather reports for a trip to New Jersey proved to be worse than dismal. Planning this trip for the end of March, we hoped to avoid major snowstorms (or any snow for that matter). Instead we found ourselves racing a Nor'easter to our hometown of Rumson, New Jersey.
Given the forecast of heavy snow, we decided to drive longer hours than on prior trips home with the hope of arriving in New Jersey before the storm. Clark did all the driving. We stopped for dinner in South Carolina and then continued driving until we reached Emporia, Virginia. We checked into a hotel at 10:00.
We left at 9:30 the next morning to continue our drive. With the exception of stopping for fuel, Clark once again drove non-stop. The drive was dreadful. We had rain and "mixed precipitation" for the whole ride. We watched the temperature drop as we drove, and it eventually hit the dreaded 32 degree mark. Mile after mile we could see the southbound traffic backed up and not moving. The reason ... accidents!
We saw one overturned car and numerous others that had been involved in accidents. Many of these were in bad shape such as those with all the glass knocked out of the windows. Right after we passed one accident, we saw another less than a 1/2 mile down the road - probably caused by the accident we had just seen. We worried about the drivers on the road with us who did not seem to want to slow down for the icy conditions.
After a grueling drive, we finally arrived near home around 5:00. Although I had brought breakfast and lunch items in the car with us, I reminded Clark that we had no food in the house for dinner and suggested / begged him to stop at a place called Delicious Orchards where I could buy enough essentials to make us dinner when we arrived home. After a quick roundup of fresh vegetables, a pre-cooked chicken, and a frozen pie crust, we concluded our drive and arrived home where I put together a scrumptious chicken pot pie for the two of us.
Having been away from home for several months, we found a few annoying plumbing problems which Clark said resulted from dried out seals. The sink in our master bedroom bathroom dripped incessantly, and the toilet repeatedly refilled itself every few seconds due to a leaky seal. We could do nothing about the leaky sink, but we could turn off the water to the toilet to stop the repeated "flushing" noise. Clearly we would need to make a trip to a plumbing parts store as soon as possible.
With New Jersey declaring a "State of Emergency" for Wednesday's predicted weather, we would not be going anywhere for a couple of days. Expecting the worst, we waited for the stormy weather to begin.
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| First snow appears in Rumson |
The storm decided not to arrive as soon as expected, and we had no snow accumulations until Wednesday evening. Meanwhile, businesses and schools had closed for the day, and only essential vehicles were supposed to be out on the roads. While we slept Wednesday night, however, the snow made its appearance. We woke Thursday morning to a driveway covered in snow and plowed in at the end by the road-clearing equipment.
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| Looking at our driveway (somewhere under all that snow) |
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| Armed and Ready to Tackle the Snow |
It took just about an hour working together to clear the snow from the driveway. Had we been able to use the snowblower in the garage, we might have finished earlier. Since we had no gas in the snowblower, and none to put in the snowblower, manual labor proved our only option for snow removal. (Clark refused to use a snow-removal service.) Fortunate for us, we only got about 5" or 6" of snow. Neighboring towns slightly further away from our location near the coast received a foot or so of wet, heavy snow.
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| Clean driveway |
As we approached the end of the driveway clearing activity, Clark left me to finish the job while he moved to the backyard to shovel his way down to the dock. His view was a lot prettier than the one I had in the front yard.
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| Snowy creek in Rumson, New Jersey |
After digging ourselves out, we headed out to do the errands that had been delayed by the storm. Besides buying plumbing parts, we had to visit the NJ Motor Vehicle Commission to renew our driver's licenses. Both Clark and mine would expire at the end of April, and we had to appear in person. Due to the bad weather, the DMV was understaffed and extra busy since people whose schools / businesses were closed for the day decided it was the perfect time to get licenses renewed or issued.
New Jersey required 6 points of identification for the license renewal. We received the list of acceptable documents in the mail with the application for renewal, so that we could come prepared. I came to the DMV with my passport, an ATM card, and my insurance card. Clark came with two, heavy bags full of papers to be sure that he would have the 6 required points. I tried to get him to bring only what was needed but failed miserably.
Friday, I had lunch plans with close friends. I made Clark lunch and headed off to meet my friends. When I got home several hours later, I found the bathroom torn apart, and Clark "chomping at the bit" to go to the plumbing store to buy a new sink fixture having failed to replace the part he bought the day before. The old part could not be extracted no matter what Clark tried. We found a replacement faucet at the store, brought it home, and Clark labored to put the sink back together.
Saturday, we drove to Connecticut to visit our son Chris, his wife Heather, and our granddaughter Lily. Lily smiled for me and gave me a hug, but her greeting for me was nothing like the one she gave Clark. For the rest of our visit, she hung around Clark, and if he disappeared even briefly, she wanted to know where "Kark" had gone.
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| Lily and her buddy Papa "Kark" watching phone videos together. |
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| Lily with her soccer ball (playing ball with Clark / "Kark") |
We left Lily and her parents (Chris and Heather) Sunday morning. Instead of heading straight back to New Jersey, however, we headed to the once-a-year clearance sale being held by the Defender Outlet Store that sells marine supplies. This excursion took us an hour in the wrong direction but proved well worth the detour.
When we arrived at the Defender Outlet Store, we could not believe the cars. They were parked on both sides down the full length of the drive into the parking lot. An attendant said we could park at the entrance or take our chances on finding a spot further along the way. We pulled into the spot he indicated and "hoofed it" down the drive to the store.
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| Defender Outlet Store |
Inside the store was no better than the parking lot. Moving down aisles proved nearly impossible at times with so many shoppers in the way. Although we had no shopping list perse, we managed to fill up our shopping cart with all sorts of "goodies".
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| Aisles at Defender (does not reflect the crowds found in the aisles) |
Four hours after we got to the outlet, we had to leave because the outlet closed at 3:00, and we had managed to stay until closing time. We came away with bags full of projects for Clark to work on!
Since we stayed in Connecticut until late afternoon, we were traveling the Garden State Parkway at sunset time. Since Clark drove, he assigned me the job of taking the picture out the passenger side window at 65 mph.
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| Sunset on the NJ GSP |
Monday we completed the last of the tasks we had set for ourselves in New Jersey. We both visited the dentist office for our semi-annual appointments ( a couple of months late). With that behind us we decided to pack with plans to hit the road early Tuesday morning to make our way back to Florida.
We managed to make it as far as North Carolina the first night. Once again we stopped for dinner and then continued until 10:00 before calling it a night. On the road the next day we saw some novel sights.
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| Fuel stop in NC |
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| Carolina Giant Tire Road Service Truck |
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| Truly Giant Tires! |
We made great time through North Carolina, but South Carolina was not so kind.
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| Traffic in SC on 95S |
We had to pass by St. Augustine to arrive at Marineland where the boat is docked. On the way by we decided that since we had to eat somewhere, we might as well eat in St. Augustine. As we drove from New Jersey, we shed layers of clothes. By the time we reached St. Augustine, we had whittled it down from winter coats to no coat at all.
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| Enjoying the warmer weather in Florida |
We played the tourist and took some pictures while we made our way to the restaurant we planned to patronize.
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| Castillo de San Marco |
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| Fort |
Our first introduction to Meehan's pub was to retrieve a forgotten coat from there for Ralph on Mazel Tug. Since then we have returned a couple of times, since we found we enjoyed the pub fare.
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| Meehan's Irish Pub for dinner |
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| Inside Meehan's Pub |
After dinner we decided to visit the city docks. Clark had looked at AGLCA "meets" and seen that folks we met at Faro Blanco, Seaquest, were currently docked there. When we go to the docks, we found Seaquest but no one was aboard. However, docked in the next space over, we found Miss Norma, whom we had met in Fort Myers.
Talking to Raime and Tim on Miss Norma, we found that Ned Pepper was also docked nearby, but no one was home there either. Raime said that the boat next to their's named Chemistry is also a looper boat (one we had not seen before). We chatted with them for a while and then headed back towards the car to finish the trip to the boat. On the way out of the marina, Clark took a picture of a small cruise ship docked there that includes a view of some of the storm-damaged and currently unusable docks at the marina.
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| Empty docks in foreground are not usable due to damage from hurricane Irma |
We finally arrived at the boat at 10:00, dragged all our bags and such from the car to the boat, stowed our gear, and called it a night! We both agree that we are happy to be back on board!
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