Last we left you dear readers, we had caught a matinee(movie! people, not THAT kind of matinee!!), spent like a drunken sailor on shore leave at a liquor store and ingested 'psketti and balls down in Ocean City MD.
Oh, here is a picture I forgot to share on the last post from our liquor store adventure.
This photo is dedicated to
Mark......
I actually found my favorite Sangria in box form in DE. This holds the equivalent of 2 large bottles and half the price.
Don't say Sluggy doesn't do her part to promote foreign trade!
Onward to Wednesday or Day Three of our Beach Vacation.
While I slept in, Hubs was up to see the sun rise, take a morning walk on the Boardwalk and by the time I arose for my morning ablutions, he had returned bearing coffee(for him)and donuts(for us). No Fractured Prune donuts this trip, just your plain old everyday Dunkin Donuts variety ones. I augmented my repast with yogurt and fruit.
We decided to venture out to Snow Hill Maryland, toward the southern end of Wocester County, on Wednesday. Snow Hill is a small quaint town halfway between the OC area and Pocomoke City MD(which lies near the VA line).
We had visited
Furnace Town Living Heritage Museum a few years ago, as well as the
Julia A. Purnell Museum in Snow Hill.
The Purnell had a special exhibit of Negro League & Early Integrated Professional Baseball memorabilia that Hubs was interested in seeing so we stopped in for that.
While perusing the collection, Hubs spotted one of these baseball cards....
If you can tell me why this card is so valuable, you are a Baseball Nerd! ;-)
Here is Hubs wishing he could be 10 years old again and do nothing but think about baseball all summer long.....
They also had their yearly Needlework Arts Competition going on at The Purnell. Every year they have an art show there of local artists and hobbyists in the Needle Arts. The visitors to the Museum get to cast votes for this competition. Having been a semi-professional costume designer in my previous life, as well as a a longtime crafter, sewer, crocheter, crewel worker and needlepoint worker(miserable rug hooker, cross stitcher and quilter too), I have great interest in seeing this show.
As for our ballots.....it's funny that even though Hubs and I have been "together" since 1978, we hardly ever pick the same entries in each category for this Needlework Arts Show. Maybe it's because he comes to this as a mostly unknowledgeable viewer, whereas my eye perceives details and filters that through a brain awash in what skills need to be mastered to achieve said details.
Hmmmm.....
I would be curious to know which entries actually win in this show. Being transit through the area, we never get the pleasure of seeing how our votes stack up with the locals and other tourists who pass through the area on these contests.
And we ALWAYS miss the big Birthday Party the Museum holds for Julia Purnell each October, because we either come the week after or the week before they hold it on Oct. 27th. This year it was the day after we left the area so no free Birthday Cake for us......sniff.....sniff.....
But Happy 169th Birthday Julia Purnell!
Missing that cake didn't stop me from posing in front of the building for a photo or two.....and yes, a nice big WIDE SHOT is always better.....lol
And here I am doing my Carol Merrill Spokes Model pose, showing off Door #2.....or was this Curtain #3?.....
After a brief stop in the gift shop where we picked up a couple of books, because you KNOW all museums, no matter how small, must have a gift shop, we set out back to OC for a late lunch.
And we found that this place had opened in West OC.....
Hubs and I have yet to eat at one of these places as they are not up here in our part of PA. So we gave it a shot for lunch.
For atmosphere I'd give them a D.....the whole industrial-look and bare plywood doesn't enhance my dining experience.
For taste I'd give them a C+......while you KNOW this is a healthier choice than Taco Bell or other Mexican-type restaurants, it borders on the bland(if you don't like lots of "heat" in your food).
I know it's the "healthier" way to do Mexican, but while I don't need fats and deep frying of my burrito, I still want sauce and to have it slathered in CHEESE.
And trying to eat a Burrito the size of a premature baby with ones hands might do it for some people, I'd prefer a plate and a knife and fork please and not a foil type paper and a plastic basket.
For someone with no experience with Chipotle's type of service, it wasn't very user friendly.
The atmosphere was minimalist and "cold" as well.
The menu was very limited. While this is good for the company to be able to keep freshness up and costs down, I didn't think the prices were that great. Maybe being in this tourist area where EVERY EATING OPTION is overpriced didn't give me the best representation of their business model on price.
The one thing I didn't care for at all?
The HUGE signage overhead at the counter/ordering place/where your food was put together. The signs about options was needed but really, do they need to post all the caloric information in such great detail and so largely?
I felt the need to get out a calculator and a scale and obsess over every morsel of food the burrito jockey employee was ladling onto my tortilla.
Will the brown rice or the pinto beans put my carb calories over or should I do both and leave off the guac? Better get a pen out and do the math....
I started feeling like a neurotic teenage girl worrying over whether I should binge and purge or just nibble on a corner of my burrito and say I was just too full to finish.
Back at the room, we did a little boardwalking again......and then I sat a spell......my readers will be relieved to hear that there is full integration and diversity on the boardwalk in OC. The benches of all colors live side-by-side in harmony.
Now let's all sing "Ebony & Ivory" one time with gusto....
While I sat Hubs went on the beach and down to the water to freeze his toes off.
Along with no feeling in his feet, he also bought back a souvenir.....
(Behind the shell is Not our hotel but the one next door.)
Wednesday night we made a quick trip to 7-11 for this.....
Having grown up in the Tidewater VA area, I was given to enjoying a Slurpee on hot Summer nights. There is a dearth of 7-11 stores where I have lived for the last 28 years. So whenever we got to OC, I indulge in a Slurpee......or 5......no really, just 1.....
We had restaurant leftovers and frozen pizza with adult beverages up in the room.
Adult Beverages again??!! Seems to be a recurring theme this trip, doesn't it? lol
Wednesday was the 1st Game of the World Series so there was no going out for us that evening.
While hubs watched the game I read one of my new books.
Thursday was our last full day in Ocean City. We still had 2 Restaurant dotcom certificates to use. We also had a mission to accomplish before leaving OC for home but more on that in a moment.
After breakfast in the room(and no, there was no "hair of the dog" involved), I went out onto the balcony for some relaxation before commencing our day.
Our room/balcony was on the 8th floor and directly looking out over one of the 2 outdoor pools at the hotel. The pool we overlooked was still full of water from the Summer Season. After looking down into the pool for about 5 minutes I finally noticed something.....something that was not there the day before.
See if you can spot what I saw.....
I will add that a large group of middle aged men without their wives and significant others, a golfing junket, arrived at our hotel on Wednesday. I will add that while the World Series viewing was going on in our room that evening, the boardwalk bar to the right of our hotel was filled with loud drunk guys, one of which decided to scream, "Woooo! I'm drunk!! I'm f'ing drunk!" over and over again while parading up the Boardwalk sometime around 1-2 am.
The weather that week in OC was such that we kept our balcony door open with the screen across every night we were there so we could be lulled to sleep by the gently crashing waves. I fell asleep finally after Mr. Drunken Ass finished his serenade but totally missed out on the noise and excitement of the Aging Frat Boys who scaled the padlocked pool area and pushed 8 glass topped patio tables and 1 lounge chair into the pool beneath our room.
After readying ourselves for the day, we had some more boardwalk strolling time.
Then it was off on our mission.....to find Daughter some tie-dyed apparel at the various Beach Stores/Souvenir Shops.
OC has about 1 Beach Store every half a block.....for miles and miles.....as far as the eye can see.
Each is filled to the brim with all that crap people find necessary to waste their money on. I won't go into details but you know what I mean.
There are a few useful items but most of it?.....Crap. And all of it overpriced.....unless you go off season when they start clearancing much of it.
We had a specific mission--find a couple of tie-dye t-shirts and a hoodie. A tie-dyed hoodie, without a zipper.....in "nice" colors, bright and not muddy.....and in her size. And my requirement?....costing under $20 but not made from crappy fabric.
Oy!
The t-shirts were found fairly readily but the hoodie?.....oy again!
I lost count after about the 6th store. We just drove up the main drag and hit every t-shirt/souvenir store we came to. Some had no tie-dyed hoodies.....some had just zippered hoodies.....some didn't have the size needed......some were ugly.......some were too expensive.......and many were a combination of these conditions.
But we finally hit pay dirt and it was 25% off which made me happy.
Having worked up an appetite, we went for lunch.
Chinese food?
Yes please......
Even Chinese food in OC is expensive. Ok, so I didn't
have to get the Peking Duck. In my defense it was only
half of a very smallish duck.
This was a very nice restaurant. Not some place we would have chosen though if I didn't have a discount certificate. It was a tad pricey for a casual lunch(I think they do a much larger weekend and evening business), so the dining room on Thursday was empty except for us.
It had a nice atmosphere, an attentive waiter(with little understanding of English but he and we were very patient with each other), an owner back in the kitchen who seemed meticulous about every detail of the food and it showed in how everything tasted!
When I took my cup of tea over to the window to snap of photo of their sign with my tea(trying to continue my photographic theme I had going in my pictures), I spilled tea all over the booth seating, so no tea cup in this photo I took after cleaning up after that silly elderly Caucasian women pouring tea all over the restaurant.....
While we were over in that part of OC, we had another urgent need to fulfill.
The yearly purchase of FRUITCAKE.......not any old fruit"best use is as a doorstop"cake......the BEST Fruitcake outside of your maiden Aunt Gertie's liquor soaked cake.......
Yo, Yo....Represent!
Claxton's in da' house!
We gonna party, like it's ya birfday.....
Yes people, THIS fruitcake is edible! Very sweet and fruity and not dry and "cakey".
But why pay through the nose online to have it delivered from Georgia?
Stroll down to your Rose's store and pick up a pound for $3.75.
One year we didn't go to OC and get fruitcake but I still got very lucky here at home. We were in the local Price Chopper grocery store a few days before Christmas and they had a load of Claxton Fruitcakes on clearance for $1.99 each.
Yes, we were eating fruitcake that year well into October of the following year. lol
One item we did NOT acquire on this year's trip was FUDGE. Candy Kitchen fudge is a longstanding tradition here at Chez Sluggy. Every Fall they put their fudge on sale for 50% off in an effort to reduce inventory on perishable goods.
Great time to buy pretty good fudge, right?
Well this year, the Fudge was NOT such a great deal......not a good enough deal to get me to part ways with my money!
Buy 2 lbs., Get 1 lb. free.
Nope....the kids(and I)can live without fudge this year. Inflation once again ruining my vacation fun....
Afterwards we hit up
Dumpster's one more time for this.....
Chocolate chip coconut ice cream?
Yes, please.
After some "down time" Thursday afternoon and a nap, we ventured back out to Delaware to use our last restaurant certificate at the Hawaiian Crab Bar & Grill.
The place was a bar with some dining tables in the bar room. We walked into the place to discover it was Bingo Night and the evening's festivities had already begun.
Oh goody!
Everyone....and I mean everyone was playing Bingo and drinking.....well, except for the 10 yr old boy at the table next to ours, the drinking part that is.
Hubs had a couple of beers with his dinner and I drank iced tea only.
There was a large group of Senior Citizen couples on the other side of us. The World Series game was on the bar tv and these couples were dressed up, head to toe in matching/co-ordinating sports wear.
Not sports wear as in, "here is this season's latest sports wear fashions you'll be seeing in the resorts and on cruise ships everywhere"......more like, "I'll wear my Phillies red cap, red Phillies baseball shirt, my Phillies belt buckle and or String tie, and my royal blue sansa-belt slacks because they, you know, "go" with the ensemble." The wife was in matching Phillies gear and red capri pants, and had a Phillies lanyard/glass holder and Phillies earrings to complete her look.
There were 2 Baltimore Orioles couples(decked out in black and orange and oh so fitting into a Halloween theme as well as the baseball one) with the "Phanatics" couple. There were a few baseball fans as well seated at the bar, though they had not put in the effort that these elderly couples had in their bar wearing finery.
Think this but sports teams.....
So sad I didn't take the camera there because no amount of describing these people does justice to it.
And did I mention that everyone was drinking yet?
We ordered in between very quickly called games of bingo(Hubs had trouble keeping up.....with the bingo, that is). It was mostly bar type food but they had some seafood so we both ordered crab soup and the crab cake sandwich and fries. The soup was great, the sandwich not so much. Not cooked right and I could tell it had been frozen. There was too much bread and not enough crab flavor. But it was filling and didn't make me sick so I'll settle for that.
And about an hour in, someone at the bar "had words" over something overheard from a fellow bar patron. I don't know if it had something to do with Bingo cheating or just feeling that the last game was rigged, but suddenly aspersions were being cast and Pittsburgh Steelers fans were being maligned and I thought we'd see heads being knocked together shortly.
Oh and the drinking continued....
Then the Bingo caller got a tad risque with comments along with the numbers being drawn.
Much laughter ensued.
Then the Bar owner/caller enlisted the 10 yr old boy(remember him at the next table? with many of his female relatives and I ASSUME one of which was his mother)to Call the numbers and HE began making comments like he had heard the adult make.
Of course this kid had no clue about the double entenders he was throwing about and the drunken crowd roared even harder with laughter hearing this kid deliver the Caller's lines.
It became too too uncomfortable for us to hear(I'd call it child abuse), so we made a hasty exit before the Bingo portion of the evening's "entertainment" was over.
Yikes.
A few adult beverages back at the room to get the taste of the evening out of my mouth.
Friday's weather was still great, though Sandy was about to advance up the coast. The beach entrance in front of our hotel had been blocked off by Friday morning and the water was looking a tad angry and starting to churn up.
We left town fairly early so we didn't hit Philly around rush hour and didn't have to hurry our trip home to avoid that scenario.
I got a good shot of one of the WW2 observation towers and they also have a big sign up this year on their efforts to Restore a Tower. Check out the website if this is a cause you think you'd like to get behind.
Then it was over the bridge up Rte. 1 and back to PA and home.
And then 3 days later Hurricane or SuperStorm Sandy came ashore along the Eastern Seaboard. While OC didn't score a direct hit, the flooding on the bay side and along the southern end of the city was bad.
Here are my "diversity benches" on Monday.....
See the bench below? These things weigh 300lbs. and are bolted down to the boardwalk. They got tossed around.....
The boardwalk, while it didn't sustain much damage, there was alot of debris and ground floor flooding of hotels. From the West OC bridge to 17th St. was closed down. Our hotel was in that stretch of beachfront.
The Ocean City pier was greatly affected by Sandy.....
The bayside homes were swamped.....
And this landmark, Layton's, was underwater. This is a block away from our hotel on the main drag through OC........I think our hotel was on a bit higher ground but still, I wonder how it fared......
And then I found this phot on Facebook of our hotel during the storm.
This is the back entrance to the hotel from the beach.
The pool full of patio tables in to the right of the fencing on the right side of this picture.....
So sad for everyone who lost anyone or anything in this storm. Join the effort to help those affected if you can.
Sandy kind of put a damper on our trip after the fact.
I hope y'all enjoyed the Trip.
And next year, I'll try not to be such a downer at the end. 8-(
Sluggy
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