My Trip--The Ocean, WW2, Pruney Donuts and Russian Prostitutes Part 2

Here's where we left off last time.....

A beautiful sunrise on Wednesday morning.
Being bored with the cafe in the motel for breakfast(we had used 1 voucher and had 1 left for breakfast to use on Thursday before we left), Hubs ventured out early to forage for morning sustenance while I tried to pry my eyelids open.

I had introduced him to The Fractured Prune last trip.
Seems he was hankering for more 'pruney donuts' this trip.
The FP is a gourmet donut shop that originated in OC.   A few years ago when we had a teacher's strike at the local school and the kids were out of school for 4 weeks at the beginning of that school year, I had taken my boys and one of their friends to Virginia Beach and then, OC and had dragged them to the FP for breakfast one morning.

There were only 2 locations at that time but it seems the FP has caught on and there are scads of outlets down in that area and beyond.  The only problem is they are only open from 7am to noon during the off-season.
They make cake type donuts.....fresh and hot. 
When they pull them from the deep fryer, you tell them what glaze to put on your donut and if you want toppings....like jimmies, chocolate chips, coconut, nuts, marshmallows, etc.
There are 'regular' combinations that are popular that they have on the menu you can get or you can make up your own.
This is something like what Hubs carted back to the room.....still hot.

They may not look like much, but if your computer had Smell-o-vision, you'd be licking your screen.

Seriously, if I lived down there, I'd weigh 600 lbs.....

This was just the incentive Hubs needed to pry my off of the mattress....at least until I ate 3 and then I just wanted to lay back down for 4 hours and sleep the sugar/carb coma off.lol

We did some sightseeing on Wednesday.  Up in Delaware near Bethany Beach they are replacing the little bridge with this monster....

 It's the same type of construction as the bridge on Route 1 that replaced/bybassed the one over Route 13 near St. George DE.   Actually it's called the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal Bridge.  It was one of the 1st cable-stayed bridges in the country and the only one in the Delaware Valley.  This one just seems gargantuan for it's purpose.
Gee, did I just talk about another bridge on my Maine trip post?  Maybe I have this latent 'thing' for bridges and engineering, huh? ;-)

When I took the kids during the teacher's strike to OC I noticed these big concrete things along the shoreline as we traveled up the coast from OC to Rehobeth.....

This shot was taken from the car so it only shows the top half.  They are quite tall and obtuse, sticking out from the scenery.
I just discovered that they are fire towers that were built along the coastline in NJ and DE during World War II.  Fire Tower is a misnomer since these were really enemy spotting & artillery aiming towers.  Our military feared/expected a Pearl Harbor type attack on Trenton and the Philly munitions and shipbuilding yards at the head of the Delaware River, so these towers were built along the route to guard against the German battleships they thought were going to sneak up the River......ships that never arrived.  Quite a few have yet to be torn down and there is a group taking on restoring them as they are historically significant.

This shot thrills me yet makes me sad....

The shoreline of Delaware is NOT totally developed and settled yet.  There are towns dotting the shore but there is still open, undeveloped acreage without huge condos or hotels on it.  This is a big contrast to the shoreline once you hit the Maryland line which is wall-to-wall monolithic buildings.  There are some state parks on the beaches in Delaware too so some of the beaches will never be developed.  This was a piece of a state park I saw from the road near where one of the fire towers is located.  It just gave me chills to see a piece of shoreline without a building or a trace of a person having been there.  An unsullied place....well, except for the road.lol

Besides buying groceries again on a vacation....lol....we went to Roses.

When I was growing up, our area was lousy with Roses stores.  It was the Woolworth's of my part of the South.  The Wal-mart of it's day. 
Now it's barely hanging on.  It concentrates on high-end dollar store junk....sort of like a Family Dollar or Dollar General, but the stores are usually bigger.  There are still Roses in VA, DE, MD and NC that I know of.
If we are near a Roses as the holidays approach, we always stop in for this....

I am NOT a fan of fruitcake per se, but.....
Claxton's Fruit Cake is da bomb!  As Alton Brown might say....
Serioulsy.
Good.
Eats.

But being the cheap, miserly, frugal gal I am, I refuse to pay $9 a lb. to buy it locally up north or online.
It was $3.50 a lb. at Roses.  We stocked up......for eating purposes, not gift-giving purposes so if you are on my gift list, don't be a'feared that I'm sending you a fruitcake for Christmas.
You are safe....

After lugging fruitcake bricks to the car it was time for an early dinner so we headed over to West OC to search out a BBQ place we had seen in the phone book.
We found it quickly enough but gee, it was CLOSED like every other restaurant down there in the off-season.
So we drove down the main drag for a bit until I smelled a heavenly porcine aroma and turned me head and saw this....

A kitchy old motel sign, a motel office with a huge B for BUDWEISER Neon sign in the window and an OPEN Flag waving us in from the other side of the office building were a BBQ Joint was perfuming the air with pig from it's on site smoker pitt.

They had me at pig.


We had stumbled upon bbq heaven.
It's name is Rascal's in West Ocean City MD.
If you hanker for smoked/barbecued chicken, brisket or pork, check it out.  Good eats and cheap eats!
We stumbled along to the back entrance of the building into a tiny poolside bar with a few boofs and sat down.

In walked Roscoe Nelson, the owner/manager of the Alamo and Rascal's.
Roscoe turned out to be a pretty colorful character.
He told us all about the history of the Alamo and it's original owner and then about himself.
He knows all the locals in OC and told us to get Denny, the guy who owns the tavern next door to our motel, to tell him the "one armed man" said hi.
Did I mention that Roscoe has one arm?
He lost it when he was 12.
After about a minute and a half of talking to him you forget he's got one arm....that is, until he brings the subject up.

Seems because Roscoe hires pretty foreign women to work his bar and more pretty foreign women live in his motel during the in-season when they work at the hotels in OC, rumors of Prostitution Rings at the Alamo started going around.  And drunk men started showing up in the late evenings/early mornings looking for the whores.....wreaking all kinds of havoc.
Bullet holes in motel windows anyone?

The gal working the bar & tables when we were there was decidely American, not foreign.  Though this rumour started years ago people still turn up at the motel looking for some 'comfort' besides the bbq kind.
Figures I'd end up at an infamous seedy motel owned by a one armed man, with fabled Russian hookers.
Even when I try to be boring, I can't.  I can't make stuff like this up.....lol

Here's a you tube vlog that the DC paper did on the story.....


 I personally liked this article located HERE that the same Washington City Paper outfit also put out.
And before you ask, no, I didn't play horseshoes or "party" with Cory and Roger.  ;-)

The motel is decidedly flea bag-esque but worth the trip for the 'Cue!

After a leisurely breakfast in our motel's cafe Thursday morning-served by Fran who after 2 pots of coffee in her by 8am was chatty as a flock of seagulls fighting over a tourists dropped bag of salted peanuts-we packed it up and headed home.
No lingering since we had to get north of Philly before rush hour started at 3pm.

Here's one more pre-sunrise shot of the Atlantic Ocean.

Funny thing I noticed this trip......usually I can smell the sea air miles before we hit the coast.  This time, not so much.  The beach didn't smell like the beach should.  Hubs even commented on it.  Maybe our noses have shorted out from old age or something....lol

Sluggy