| The Start Tuesday, August 24th Maddie and I (Louise had to work) left early in the morning. Very quickly plagued by 4 screwups. Screwup 1: Wanted to get an EZ Pass for all the tolls. The EZ Pass site showed an office at the Ft. McHenry Tunnel in Baltimore. Unfortunately, they meant "close to an exit near the Ft. McHenry Tunnel". By the time you reach the toll booth, it's too late--can't get there from here. And no other EZ pass office ahead of us in Maryland. Turned out not to matter--none of our ~20+ toll stops took more than a few seconds. Screwup 2: Brought several books on tape to pass the travel time. Toward the end of CD 1, CD player went on fritz. Dang. A thousand miles without a CD player. What did the pioneers do in the covered wagons during the legs between hot dog stands and amusement parks? Screwup 3: The Charcoal Pit in Wilmington wasn?t open until 11:30, and we neared Wilmington around 10:30. Thank God for cell phones! Adjusted our Wilmington dining place to Deerhead Hot Dogs (see below) Screwup 4: where Microsoft Streets and Trips had yielded incorrect directions. Thank God for cell phones! |
| Deerhead Hot Dogs, Wilmington, DE http://www.hollyeats.com/Deerhead.htm A tasty paste-sauce is the special aspect of these dogs. Kinda zesty. Maddie had hers with just ketchup, and quickly had her shirt and shorts covered with just ketchup (grrr..). Fries were OK, nothing special. The dogs were followed by a trip to Rite Aid for wet naps to clean up the insane ketchup mess. Trip was not looking particularly promising-- messy kid, no CD player, already off the schedule, lots of toll booths ahead. It got better. No traffic to speak up around Philly, up Eastern PA, through the Allentown area. Not great road signs leading us into NJ, but nothing critical. Stopped in NJ at Radio Shack for a personal CD player, which was then used through the rest of the trip to play the Shrek 2 soundtrack about 50 times. Remind me not to spend too much time selecting books on tape in the future. |
| Hot Dog Johnny's, Buttzville, NJ We split a dog and had a homemade root beer. Not the most amazing dog, but it was on the way. |
| Land of Make Believe, Hope, NJ LOMB is an amusement park/water park tailored to the under-10 set. The rides are just my speed. Arrived around 3, immediately got to work waiting in a 15-minute line for a mediocre spinning dragons ride. Then very short waits for a bunch of far superior rides, which perked things up a bit. Ate some cotton candy and bought some "animal feed" (actually just some fibery crackers) for a visit to the petting zoo. The petting zoo was filthy with fibery crackers-- everybody buys some, the animals can only eat so much, so the crackers become a thick mulch. Next up, the world's scariest Santa picture on a silo, and a visit to Santa's workshop. Boring, but cutish. A completely underwhelming haunted house (which nevertheless spooked Maddie). Fun with five "stick your head in here" photo motifs. Then we changed for the water park. The water park was great: a pirate ship with small slides for the little guys, and a big climbing set with numerous water cannons and spilling contraptions, topped with a giant bucket that spills its contents every few minutes. We played on that for a while, then took a couple of laps on the lazy river tube ride. Maddie then pushed for the big tube ride (a ride on tubes, through big plastic tubes). I resisted because a) I wanted to get going, b) I hate rides, c) I didn't relish climbing the enormous staircase just to have Maddie lose her courage and have to walk down. We grabbed a double tube, trudged up, got in, and had an amazingly good ride. Took a while to internalize the concept that the ride was designed so you wouldn't flip over and spend 20 seconds sliding through water on your face. Got to the bottom, decided to take 1 more ride before leaving. Did that 5 times, when they finally closed the ride. Changed (no shower facilities), back on the road. Maddie napped en route to Clifton, NJ, where we checked into the Wellesley Inn. |
| Rutt's Hut Clifton, NJ Even better than I remembered it, and I remembered it being pretty good. Maddie and I got rippers (deep-fried until they burst open)-- me with the special relish (mustardy-carroty melange, not ground up pickles), her with ketchup which stayed on the dog this time. We shared tasty gravy fries. Hmmm. Another round? Sure! This time I had a cremator, which was crunchier but smaller. Maddie had another ripper, this one a virtually perfect dog: large, plump, crunchy. Back to the hotel for Shrek 2 on the tube. |
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