New Jersey

Today we saw many things. After checking out of our hotel and picking up Hind in Clifton, we saw the Lincoln Tunnel, the Empire State Building, Wall Street, Macy's, New York traffic (including dodging cars and getting shouted at by New Yorkers), the Holland Tunnel, the Statue of Liberty, Chinatown, Newark (where we felt like foreigners), ate reubens at a diner, and rode the ferry back from Cape May to Lewes.

Something interesting about the big highways here: there are not so much businesses and billboards directly on the highway -- often trees on both sides of the road. I don't know if the highways have been built around the edges of towns, or they just did a better job of planting green space. We drove from Cape May to Newark and saw very little in the way of heavy urban development. The exception was Atlantic City, which we could see glittering on the shoreline.

On that subject. Just found out last night that Duran Duran are in New Jersey the same nights we are. Too late for me, though, to get a ticket. But I like the thought that we might have passed on the highway around Atlantic City.

Everywhere there is the sense of many people competing for a small amount of space.

It was great seeing Hind, and I was sorry to see her go back to Texas. There are a lot of people speaking French here (mostly Canadian tourists) but I haven't figured out how to get the kids another teacher. They have been trying to pluck up the nerve to speak to some of the kids they hear speaking French, but it's intimidating -- I can't blame them. There are a great many foreign people here, I think mostly Eastern Europeans in their early twenties, working seasonal jobs. Everywhere we go people are speaking different languages. I will be interested to see whether this changes abruptly in September. There are two girls living in the tent across from us: I think from Russia. One of them works at McDonalds; I have seen the other cleaning the bath house and standing watch at the swimming pool. I wonder if they are getting a cheap campsite as wages.

I certainly can't see how anyone is making enough from a service job to pay rent, anywhere here. The biggest problem with the contractors Tom works with is accomodation. Some of them are paying $400 a week for a crummy apartment, and most are driving 10-20 miles like Tom. One guy commutes all the way from Baltimore to save on paying another rent. There are a few other contractors who are camping out, like us, but none who brought their families. There is one married couple, who have dogs.

lazy Saturday

Today we are in Lewes. There is a breeze, the sun is shining, and it is pretty cool here in the shade. We are sitting in a park next to the lifting bridge. Cars and trucks make a humming sound as they go by. A large powerboat just squeaked back into its spot between the pilings: if it was a few inches larger it would not fit. The park is on the side of a hill next to the water and there are trees making a shady canopy overhead. We can sit on the grass: there are no fire ants here! There are about 7 old cannons around us: most were donated by the army and one may have come from a pirate ship. We are across from the post office which is a square traditional brick building with Greek details. The town of Lewes bills itself as the first in the state, and there are plenty of buildings dating back to the 1700s and before. Parking here is cheaper than in Rehoboth, and there always seem to be plenty of spaces. We have been alternating between reading Harry Potter and debating the fine points of the plot. Oliver is asleep. Arthur has been blowing up the baloons a realtor gave us yesterday in Crisfield: he has been decorating them with faces. The flies that have plagued us continually since we arrived in Delaware seem to be absent today: I'm hopeful that we just arrived at an unusually bad time for them. There is an enormous amount of boat traffic on the water here: mostly fishing boats and power boats, but one sailboat tood off to the left of us and there have been a couple of tour boats go by. I understand there is still a fair amount of commercial fishing in the area, but I don't smell it where we are. Looking on the map, I see that where we are sitting is the Lewes & Rehoboth Canal, and to the left (Northwest) of us is the Rooselvelt Inlet, which gives out onto Delaware Bay. Tom has just walked over to the dock where a pontoon boat has just rammed the dock. They were stuck but appear to have worked loose, so he didn't need to help. We have been in that spot before with the sailboat: it's humbling because you feel like everyone's watching.

Our trip East

We intended to leave early morning, but took longer to get everything packed. Coming out of the driveway, we lost the bike rack, and so left it unceremoniously in the garage. Left around lunchtime just as all the fast food places had water shut off. Finally hit tyhe road at the hottest part of the day, in a fine temper. About thirty miles down the road the trailer was fishtailing alarmingly every time another vehicle passed too fast, and we returned home to jettison that as well. Back on the road again and the exterior was starting to fly off the front of the trailer, so detoured to Wal-Mart to buy more bungee cord. Thus wrapped and packed more tightly, we continued on, and decided to stay in hotels rather than unpack the trailer each night.

The trip went fairly uneventfully after that: the first night we stayed in a luxurious hotel (the only one available) somewhere in North Texas. We had cheaper digs thereafter. Once out of Texas, the heat let up a little and the trees began steadily getting taller. The van is very comfortable to travel in and we didn't have too much of a problem with boredom. We were still trying to get through the 5th Harry Potter book, so there was a lot of opportunity here. The kids managed to entertain themselves (with some whining) and we never had to resort to watching one of the DVDs.

By the third day we were in Virginia, almost to our destination. We stopped off at Charlottesville to visit Monticello, and stayed until early afternoon. We drove up the eastern shore and stayed in Maryland Saturday night. At this point the weather started getting warm and humid for the first time since we'd left home. On Sunday we arrived in Delaware and camped out at Cape Henlopen State Park. It was a relief to stop driving.

catch up

It has taken us a little while to get reliable internet access, and today I find that our ISP has unexpectedly cut us off. So I will be trying to use this blog to keep in touch. Hopefully I can go back and catch up on all the stuff we've done over the past month. Wish me luck.

(PS It is August as I write this but I dated it July 7th so it will appear at the top.)