Long travel days are not great for this one… we have started giving her calming treats to help her relax a bit. Her normal fireworks dose might be a smidge too much though…

With a day shortened by packing and preparing to leave this beautiful location, we decided to make a quick trip to the west coast of New Jersey. We went to North Cape May and saw where the Lewes-Cape May ferry docks, then drove up the coast to find an afternoon snack. We stopped at Fleck’s in Villas, NJ. Fleck’s is a baseball themed, family run ice cream parlor. What an awesome find! The ice cream was delicious and the service was fantastic! We definitely recommend a stop here if you are in the area!

Cape May started as a small fishing village, centered around the whaling industry. But by the mid 1700’s, it had established itself as the premier vacation spot for prominent families in the northeastern United States. Over the past 2 centuries, it has had to rebuild itself a couple times due to fire and such. Much of the current construction was completed in the late 1800s showcasing a beautiful mix of Victorian styles - Gothic Revival, Queen Anne, and American bracketed style buildings can be seen throughout the island. While in Cape May, we spent a couple hours tooling around and looking at all the beautiful homes - many of them are vacation rentals.

This morning we drove over to Cape May Point State Park . We saw the Cape May lighthouse, explored through the ecological exhibits at the park and visited the beach. On this beach is an abandoned bunker from WWII, Battery 223 of Fort Miles . It was built as part of a set of batteries - connected to Cape Henlopen on the other side of the bay opening into the Atlantic Ocean - to protect Delaware Bay from intruding forces.

This was our first time going to the Jersey Shore. We chose Wildwoods since it’s closest to where we’re staying but still a similar effect of the boardwalk, shops, etc. We are here as the season is ramping up, so it was decently busy during the week. We were a bit surprised about how far the ocean is from this particular boardwalk (it felt like 1/2 a mile!), but we still ventured out to it!

Our travel day to NJ was fairly uneventful, but we made a last minute decision that may have made it a longer travel day! We had been planning to take the Lewes-Cape May ferry from DE to NJ since our next stop is Cape May. After seeing the traffic and ferry and having spoken with a few friends about taking an RV across on the ferry, we decided we would drive rather than take the ferry. Whlie we would be encouraged to explore the ferry and watch the water go by, we didn’t like that we would have to leave the dogs in the truck (with no way to keep an eye on them) while exploring the ferry. So, we’ve put it on our list for another time.

Wishing you a safe day celebrating 250 years of American Independence!

We spent this Friday with Kate’s aunt and uncle, exploring Dover. We had a few people ask us about all of us being in RED, so we got to share the story with them.

We had a great time seeing the Dover Green , the Old State House, and the John Dickinson Plantation and learning about what makes Delaware special in the founding of our great nation!

We spent part of the afternoon at the Dickinson plantation learning about life in the colonial period. John Dickinson is known as “the Penman of the American Revolution”, having penned or contributed to several notable documents written during the American Revolution.

On our way out to visit Fort Miles at Cape Henlopen, we came across Atlantic Liquors ! Their tagline makes a bold statement that it is the GREATEST liquor store in the world, so we had to check it out! We had some really interesting finds while in the store.

While we passed on the Old Bay flavored Vodka (which would likely make a mean Bloody Mary…), we did end up grabbing some Kirkland margaritas. Have you seen Kirkland branded liquors outside of a Costco Liquor store? We haven’t!