Wildwood, NJ Days 3 &4 - Beach Daze

Wow, I am beached out already. We've spent the past 2 days on the beach and boardwalk or in the pool. The weather has been perfect over the past 2 days, in the 80's with this wonderfully cool ocean breeze so you never get hot. I could spend all day here just sitting watching the waves and enjoying that breeze.

Yesterday we enjoyed the beach right in front of the condo we are staying in on Magnolia Ave. We're only a block and a half from the boardwalk which is great, you can walk out the front door and be there in about 60 seconds. The drawback is that the beach is so far away from the boardwalk here. It's like crossing a dessert to reach it, our first day out it felt like a mirage, you could see it in the distance, but it felt like no matter how far you walked you were never going to reach it.

So today we tried driving further down the island past where the boardwalk ends and all the hotels are beach front. We parked on Rambler Rd. around the 7100 block where it was a much shorter walk to the water, plus there was a nice wooden walkway that stretched more than halfway down.

There we found a large warm tidal pool, with a few schools of minnows swimming through that had gotten stuck there at low tide. The boys found some nice shells and a hermit crab in there.

While strolling on the beach, I noticed these cute little birds, that would wank around the wet sand looking for anything the waives may have washed ashore, but then scurry out of the way of on coming waives.

The beaches here are very clean and it's a great family friendly atmosphere. There were also several dogs on the beach today, we watched a lab enjoy dashing into the waves to get his ball. It was quite entertaining for the kids to watch. We saw lots of families with young children especially here, I haven't notices as many school aged kids since it's the beginning of the school year. That is what makes it particularly nice, because the beaches and the boardwalk are not crowded. It's like living in a quiet little beach town, when we get in the car to just drive around the island and site see, we would be only one of like 5 cars on the road (with in eye site). The speed limit here is 25mph so you can take your time while driving along Ocean Ave. it's like taking a leisurely Sunday drive to no where in particular. They have several very nice playgrounds on the island between Ocean and Atlantic Ave. we stopped to let the kids play at two of them.

The kids built their first official sand castles today. We call them official because building a sand castle in a playground sandbox and on an actually beach are two totally different experiences.

After an afternoon at the beach, we went for lunch on the boardwalk and then walked all the way to the north end where the beach begins to have some really nice sand dunes. We took some family photos here before returning to our condo.

Wildwood, NJ Day 2- Rainy Day Adventures

Today was a rainy day here at the beach, which is always a disappointment when your on any vacation. My kids were horrified this morning when they stepped out on the balcony and saw it was raining. Right away I started thinking what I was going to do with the kids for fun, so as not to waist this day. I thought we could see a movie, I heard there was a theater right on the boardwalk just a block or two away, but they weren't playing a single kid appropriate film, then I found an indoor water park at the Montego Bay Hotel, but after visiting their site, the photos showed it to be just a large swimming pool, and a spiral slide, not very impressive. Then I remembered there was a small aquarium on the boardwalk as well, but after researching, I found several reviews online that said it was nothing more then an exotic pet shop with tropical fish.

So after all my planning bubbles popped, and I thought this day was going to be a wash, the rain stopped. We decided to chance going up to the boardwalk, luckily for us it may have been cloudy and cold, but it didn't rain any more the rest of the day. We ventured down to the Morey's Pier, there are three on the boardwalk, all with the same name, we went the the center one today that held their water park. We heard there was a cool attraction down there called the Ghost Ship, it was a walk through haunted house. On the way down, we got to see a parade of motorcycles ride past us on the boardwalk. Today was the last day of bike week in Wildwood and this was kid of their farewell parade.

The rides on the pier were highly enjoyable, the kids loved them, the tickets aren't cheep though, it costs us $50 for 57 tickets, I wasn't willing to spend any more then that. Unfortunately we learned that today was the last day for their water park for the season, and it was closed, due to the rain. This was yet another disappointment added to our day. And to top it off after buying our tickets we also learned that the pier would be closing early today, at 3pm. This gave us an hour and a half to spend our tickets, I guess the ticket teller didn't feel the need to mention this. We skipped the Ghost ship though, it turned out not to be appropriate for children under 10, my kids were nervous just looking at the thing. Korbin didn't want to get near it, they were playing this loud sound track of spooky music and screams. My husband and I thought it looked like a good time, but I wasn't going to spend the 12 tickets per person to go in it.

We made our way down onto the beach where we found several tidal pools. The kids enjoyed running through these and found several exciting finds. Including seeing their first jelly fish and a few small crabs.

This was the first time we found a large amount of fully intact sea shells, the beach is mostly covered with broken up bits of them, you have to really watch that you don't step on them as not to cut your foot.

For lunch we found a place that served fresh lobster bisque and New England Clam Chowder Soup. It was so good to have a hot cup of soup on a cold day. We tried some of their jumbo peal and eat ship which was just as delicious. We finished up the day just strolling down the board walk, enjoying fudge, and salt water taffy along the way.

When we reached the end we got a ride back to our condo where we discovered a little problem. They room key to our apartment was not the same key that opened the door to let you into the apartment complex! We had to wait for a friend of the owner to come and let us in. I amused the kids by walking around the block taking photos of Domo, a little stuffed animal that Korbin won for Tyler earlier today. We called it "The Many Adventures of Domo, Part 1". We went around the block and the boys took turns finding creative or funny spots to place Domo and we would snap his picture and say what he was up to. They found this quite amusing, and after we finally got back to the room and settled inside, I showed Tyler how to use the Windows Movie Maker on my computer. He learned it very fast and put the photos in the order he wanted and chose the transitions for between them, all by him self. Putting together a photo slide is much easier then video clips. He wanted it to go up on YouTube, but I'm not to sure about that yet, so I've decided to post it here for Domo's first debut. The kids had such a good time finding spots to take his picture and putting together the slide show, that I don't doubt there will be more Adventures with Domo posted here in the future. Hope you enjoy the show.

Down at the Jersey Shore Wildwood NJ Day1

Greetings every one from Wildwood, NJ. Today is day number one of our family vacation. We made it here after driving 4 hours from Harrisburg, PA. My kids went in the ocean today for the first time. I was so happy to be able to get them here after years of planning to take them to the beach.

When Paul and I got married we took our honeymoon down in Atlantic city, worst idea ever. It was mid march, so it was windy and freezing, you couldn't go in the water, and most of the boardwalk was not yet open for the season. The only thing to do was go into the casinos, which are open all year round, but if you have kids you can't do that either. I didn't miss out on anything though, I don't gamble and it wouldn't have interested me, but it was annoying being stopped by casino security and being redirected every where we tried to go inside one. My eldest was 2 and my youngest 6mo. at the time so they didn't remember anything about it. So this trip is their first official time at the beach.

The weather down here is very cool today, but not cold. It's about 70 degrees with clear skies, and the boardwalk surprisingly is not overly crowded. It's the last day of biker week, the noise is unbelievable. One the way in there were bikers every where, I've never seen so many, or heard so many, it's like a being surrounded by pack of roaring lions. We rented this huge mini-van, a Chrysler Town and Country, it was my first time driving one, so I was afraid I would run over these guys on their bikes if I wasn't careful, but thankfully there was no incidents.

The place we are staying in is actually quite nice, we rented a condo just 1.5 blocks from the boardwalk. The walls are painted with bright colors, and I love bright colors. The dinning/living room is banana yellow and the kitchen is sherbet makes me feel like I'm in Florida instead of NJ. We even have a pool table, which the kids are taking full advantage of. Some of the down sides are that allot of the other condos are rented to bikers, which is not a bad thing, but the condo has it's own parking grauge on the first floor of the building for all the renters, and when the bikers start their rides us it shakes the whole floor like a mini earthquake. In fact that's what I though it was the first time I felt it, took me awhile to figure out what it really was.

After the kids played in the ocean, we ate at a pizza place on the boardwalk, were the slices were huge, twice the size of the ones back home, I'm not kidding. Then we played some arcade games and my sister and Tyler joined forces to complete this game where you play a thief and have to make your way through a laser maze. The object was to make it down this dark hallway of green lasers with out touching any and beat the clock, like a high security system in a museum. It wasn't really worth the $6 per person price, since it only lasted under 2 minutes to complete.

I'm missing all our pets though, we had to leave all of our Pomeranians with friend's and family. We had a mini scare this morning, when we received a phone call from a YWCA saying they had our dog Bu. Apparently he had run away from our friend whens he took him to the park, they spent the whole night looking for him. I'm glad to say he was safely returned to our friend, who was so nice enough to watch him for us. I hope he doesn't give her too much more trouble, we are glad everything worked out.

We are looking forward to the rest of our week here and I hope I'll have more to share tomorrow. And while we are away we are running a giveaway of a pair of really nice earrings for the fall. You can find the details in our previous posting, which should appear below this one. Our giveaway is being hosted by our friends at The Hand Me Down House, while we are away, so visit their blog http://thehandmedownhouse.blogspot.com/ for details on how to enter this fabous give away.