So I just now put up a new gallery of shots I took at Ocean City, New Jersey yesterday.  Labor Day weekend kind of snuck up on me this year, and I hadn’t made any plans at all.  I had a lot of housework I could do, but I could just let the weekend slid by without doing Something. So I thought of going to Ocean City. 

Ocean City is where I went with mom on her summer vacations, back when I was a young teen.  I’d been taken to a variety of east coast beach towns when I was small, but in my early adolescence we settled on Ocean City, and went back year after year.  And OC is where most of my best memories of vacationing by the seashore are.  You can see some of the shots I took way back in the 1970s in Gallery Three – The Shadows and Light Sessions. 

It was probably too late to reserve a room at the beach…and anyway I am saving for a couple trips I want to take later this year…One to Key West on New Year’s Eve, and the other to Disneyworld…maybe…during the week the Hubble servicing mission launches.  Disneyworld could end up costing a lot, and for sure Key West will as the rates just go through the roof there that week (as I found out last year!).  So I have to save for all that.  But Ocean City New Jersey is only about a three and a half hour drive from Casa del Garrett.  So yesterday morning I basically just jumped in the car with only my Canon digital SLR and a zoom lens and drove to Ocean City for a day trip. 

It’s a short drive…first up I-95 to the Delaware Memorial Bridge, and then basically follow US Route 40 almost to the coast.  At Harding Lakes you take road 559 to Great Egg Harbor Bay and across to Ocean City.  It’s one of those Jersey Shore barrier island beach towns.  From the north end of the island you can see the Atlantic City Casinos, which I’ve never had the slightest urge to visit.  Ocean City has a nice beach, a great boardwalk and a friendly atmosphere…in part I’m convinced because it is one of the few "dry" beach towns on the east coast.  Meaning they don’t serve alcohol there and you can’t buy it in any store.  I think that probably keeps the rowdiness factor down.  If you really want it, you can buy it at the huge liquor store right across the bridge on the mainland and bring it back, and drink to your heart’s content in your room.  Just don’t take it outside or go wandering around drunk because you Will get noticed by the police.

When I got there I drove to my OC point of reference…the Port O Call hotel, which is a really nice 60s design six floor hotel right on the boardwalk…the only high rise they ever allowed to be built there.  This time I wasn’t getting a room…my plan was to just find a parking space and stroll the boardwalk with my camera for the afternoon, and maybe take in a good boardwalk restaurant.  At first it looked like I might not be able to find any street parking at all.  Most of the streets near the beach are lined with individual guest houses, many of which have little to no parking of their own.  So everyone parks on the street.  When the guest houses are full, so are the streets.  I drove up and down for a while, and then went to where the all day lots are, and as it turned out, there were spaces available there after all.  It was twenty bucks for all day parking…but that was a lot less then the cost of a room and the boardwalk would provide all I needed for the day in terms of food and drink and clean restrooms.

Now I know I can have a good time at OC for an afternoon on the spur of the moment with just my camera and a few bucks.  The only drawback was that I didn’t want to go home and kept putting it off until late.  So consequently I didn’t get back until very late.  But for just the cost of gasoline and parking and beach food it was worth it.

I may go back on my birthday week.  I asked around and it turns out nowadays the boardwalk doesn’t start closing down until October.  The big Wonderland amusment park at the north end of the boardwalk doesn’t close for the season until October 15th.

More in the Ocean City photo gallery…Here.