Quick NJ Trip

Aside from the oh-so fun half marathon (which really wasn't that bad), I did have fun on my recent NJ trip. As nice as it would have been to fly up, I've been trying to sort out a slow leak in my C172's fuel tank, so I wound up driving up this time. I hit the road around 9am on Saturday, which seemed to be just in time to tie up nicely with all the horrible weekend drivers. It was peak bloom week for the cherry blossoms in DC, so traffic heading toward the city was a bit stupid, but I eventually made it to NJ with only moderate amounts of yelling.

I had lunch at my parents' house before Mom and I made our way down to Atlantic City. We got there just fine, left the car in the parking garage, then wandered down to Resorts so I could pick up my race packet.

Since part of the boardwalk was blocked off with the race equipment, we figured it would be nicer to walk back to Caesars along the beach. The weather was beautiful!

We eventually made our way back to Caesars, grabbed our bags from the car, checked in (and waited what seemed like forever to get our room), and went upstairs to get settled in.

We wound up randomly picking a restaurant (Continental) for dinner. What a good pick - the food was delicious! This is what they brought me when I ordered 'Smores Berries' for dessert. After dinner we went back to the room so I could try to get some sleep for the race. (If you want to read about the race, just check out my previous post.)


After the race the next morning, I walked back on the beach...

...then eventually came back up onto the boardwalk a few blocks down. There were still runners passing by, heading toward the finish line, but the boardwalk was starting to fill up with people wandering around, sightseeing.

I went back to the hotel room and got cleaned up, then we went to Cafe Roma for lunch. We spent the afternoon wandering around some of the shops, went down to the Tropicana so I could get myself some Godivas (two whole boxes of fancy truffles...yum!), then walked on the beach a bit more before heading back to the room to relax a bit. I was getting more and more stiff from the race, and every time I sat down, it was harder to get back up again.

We eventually went out to dinner, and since the food was so good the night before, we went back to Continental. I had the lobster mac and cheese I'd been eyeing up the previous night, and Mom had chicken and waffles. We both got fancy desserts, too.   :)

I was pretty beat after dinner, so we went back to the room, watched TV, and eventually passed out. This was the sunset from our room. Nice view! (For my fellow airplane geeks, the big open patch on the left side of the picture is what used to be Bader Field. I landed there once before it closed.)

We left the hotel pretty early the next morning, but not before I lost $4 playing video poker. We waited to eat breakfast until we got back, and for good reason:

the Liberty Diner has a really good crabs eggs benedict that I'd been looking forward to for a while.  :)

I spent most of the rest of the day being lazy at my parents' house. My legs were still pretty angry from the race, so I mostly just sat around reading books, surfing the internet, and inhaling my leftover lobster mac and cheese.

Mr. Big Kitty kept me company for a while.   :)

We went to Carollo's for dinner...

...then I had Coldstone for the first time. It was good!

I had to head back to VA the next morning (Mark and I had plans that afternoon). I didn't want to risk getting stuck in the afternoon rush hour traffic, so I left right after I finished breakfast and packed up my car.

Breakfast of champions: cold pizza and coffee.   :)     The drive back to VA was fine, and overall I had a really nice trip!