Cape May, NJ

My parents and I took off on another bus trip together. This time to Atlantic City and Cape May, NJ. Although I have lived and traveled extensively up and down the East Coast all my life I have never visited the Jersey Shore. My parents had been to Atlantic City before but not Cape May or Wildwood, our central location for the trip.

   Our hotel was typical of those found in coastal towns all up and down the eastern shore. One block over was the Wildwood boardwalk. It reminded me of what Myrtle Beach, SC looked like 30 years ago. Rows of t-shirt stores, pizza parlors, and arcades. During our free time one afternoon I walked the boardwalk from one end to the other. As you can see it was not very crowded being a fall weekday.

   One of our places to visit was the historic village of Smithville. This is a shot of one of the little greenway areas around the village. After we spent our morning walking around the shops we boarded the bus to our next destination, the Renault Winery. This is the entrance into the winery. The building inside reminded me somewhat of a mission or church type building. We had a wonderful lunch of penne pasta, meatballs, chicken, salad, bread, and all the wine we wanted to taste. They had six or eight of their 23 brands available.

We left the winery at 2:20 for our next destination, Atlantic City. My folks had been here a couple of years ago on another bus trip and stayed at Balleys in Atlantic City. Our tour was booked to go to Trumps Taj Mahal casino at the other end of the boardwalk. Upon arriving each person received two coupons, one $5 for gambling and one for a buffet meal upstairs on the second floor of the casino. The bus would return to pick us up at 8:45.

Mom and dad wanted to show me the other casino plus I wanted to walk along this rather famous boardwalk. We decided to do this first. Along the way we stopped at the Korean War Memorial. I took the picture of this beautiful square and hotel looking across the street from the memorial. The last picture is of one of the steel piers located at either end of the boardwalk.

  We returned back to the Taj Mahal to eat dinner and then play the slots. I had taken a roll of quarters as my gambling money. I have been in a casino in my life until this trip. It was very fascinating to say the least. We play our money in hand, mom and dad gave me a roll of quarters in addition to mine plus theirs until we ran out of  money, about 7:30. It was a lot of fun to have all those quarters come pouring back out of the machine. I never did strike it rich but I had a good time.

The next morning we drove over to Cape May for our morning boat ride to see porpoises. I have a picture of our boat and one similar to it we passed out on the water. We left the inlet around Cape May and headed out into the Atlantic Ocean to go around the very tip of NJ. 

We did many school of porpoises, who make this area of the ocean their home during the warmer season. They leave in late fall to migrate down to the coast of NC. It was fun to watch them dive and swim along with the boat.

After we had plenty of time to get pictures and watch them play we continued our sail on around the island and the light house. It is still in use today. We did not get to actually go to the lighthouse but I did get some pictures.

Located just off the end of the island is the remains of the SS Atlantus, shipwrecked in 1926. Time and storms eventually broke it apart leaving this rusted shell as a reminder. Once we rounded the shipwreck we entered another very beautiful inlet, the third picture, to take us back to the dock.

The boat ride took about two hours. We boarded the bus a little after 12 noon to take us on into the town of Cape May. We found very nice restaurant to have lunch and then walked along the several blocks of shops. The streets are closed off giving visitors amble room and safety to stroll along. We did not really have enough time to see everything at Cape May including the very fine Victorian homes. The walkway where the shops are located was so tree and people lined I really could not get good pictures. We were due back on the bus at 3:15 for our ride back to the motel.

That evening we had a very nice dinner and show at the nearby hotel where we had been having all our meals. I have one picture of our table singing along with one of the songs. You can see the performer in the background. 

We had a great trip. When we left home on Monday, September 15th, Hurricane Isabel was spinning out in the Atlantic Ocean and heading for the NC coast. We were not sure if this would interfere with our trip or not. As you can see from the pictures, we had two very beautiful days of weather. Our ride home on Thursday was right into the teeth of Isabel as she came up the coast of NC and into VA, Maryland, and DC. 

Visit my trip page if you would like to see reports from some of my other trips.

Updated Sunday, September 21, 2003