Playing Tourist

With rain predicted from Wednesday on, Denny and I knew Tuesday was the day to see Atlantic City. It was a pleasant and relatively short drive from our campground, but once we got into Atlantic City things got a bit confusing. The next time around I would research where I wanted to go a bit more in advance of our actual trip, because in heavy traffic it's hard to make last minute decisions on which way to turn, especially here in New Jersey where most turns go off to the right to prevent left turn traffic tie-ups. I guess it's effective, but it surely is confusing at times. We picked a casino to walk to, apparently parking illegally but when all the parking garages have a height restriction of 6'6" and your truck is close to 7' tall, you park where you can. Neither Denny nor I could find slot machines that we really liked, so after an hour we left, with $30 more in our pockets than we arrived with. So we asked a local gendarme how to get to the Boardwalk, found a nice place to eat and allowed Mr. Trump to buy our lunch for us. We browsed a few shops, enjoyed the view of the ocean, people watched for a while and then called it a day.

We wanted to tour the Absecon lighthouse but after Labor Day they are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Just our luck. According to the website, the lighthouse is the tallest in New Jersey and the third tallest lighthouse in the country, having 228 steps. The St. Augustine lighthouse has 219 steps in comparison, and that was a lot of steps to climb. You'll note that it's also no longer close to the ocean.

I think at this point we were at the northeast point of town, far from the casinos but on the Boardwalk. What a difference from "downtown". Here the Boardwalk was deserted except for a couple fishermen and a lone sun worshipper.

Downtown near Martin Luther King Blvd. the Boardwalk was a whole different story, but still uncrowded. I don't know if that's a sign of the economy or if Atlantic City normally clears out this much after Labor Day. But it was nice not to have to fight crowds of tourists.

Sometimes I do things that make Denny uncomfortable, like walking up to a complete stranger and asking him to take our picture. In talking to the gentleman after he acquiesced, it turns out he has two brothers, both doctors, who work in Ohio. One is employed at a hospital in Cinci, where Denny is from and the other works nights in the ER of the hospital in Wilmington, OH which is where I went to be treated for my cat bite wounds. He was absolutely amazed that we were from Ohio and had even been to the hospital where his brother works. We chatted for a while and then went on our way; he was in the process of walking the entire boardwalk. It's really surprising how many of these "small world" moments we have in our travels. I guess the world is not such a big place after all.