It was beautiful, the sun was rising between the gathering clouds over all the boats starting to putter out to sea. The wind was pretty fierce as well, which I love, so all that mingled with a morning calm made for an invigorating walk by the harbor.
A little while after I got back Todd woke up and the morning breakdown of camp began. His irritation from the day before had calmed and within an hour we were treating ourselves to a diner breakfast at Dock Mike's with Dottie, our waitress. She was delightful, as was the emptiness of the place and the food on our plates. It hit me that, though Todd's addiction to cigarettes and coffee is costly, my addiction to diner's is more so. I can never eat in a diner and not think of my Dad. Its a strange connection, but if you know him, its also an easy one. My love of eating out at greasy spoons, especially while traveling and looking to talk to people, is definitely from his influence.
We lingered a long while there, and Dottie was kind enough to keep our refills coming. It was another meander day and the clouds outside had finally massed and decided to soak the day over time with a steady drizzle. Around 11 we finally headed out to sit by the Garden State entrance in hopes of a ride.
Despite the rain we had a good time with it. I was the thumb guy for the day, due to my positioning, and would thumb obvious turn downs like the postman or local bus drivers. Usually I'd get big laughs and thumbs up in response with the occasional horn as well.
An hour or so went by before we got a cop to roll up on us. He was quite friendly and simply told us hitching was illegal in Jersey, but then supplied us with a NJ Transit schedule to Atlantic City he just happened to have on him. No IDing or any of that stuff, just let us know we weren't supposed to do what we were doing and that was that. Take some notes Tennessee PD. Doing your job correctly increases support for what it is you do.
Shuffling off back into town we made our way to the bus station. It was $4.75 each to AC and we figured it seemed like a cheap way to give us another good push. I called my Mom on the way down to update her on our ever shifting plans.
The brief tour of the town was nice. We hadn't gotten down to the more public beach end of town, so we were amused by the typical cutesy East Coast beach house frills that seem to be all up and down the Atlantic for colonial remembrance. Ten minutes before the bus left, we got to the station and bought our tickets. Soon I was lost in watching the towns drift by as Todd typed away at Pocketmail.
Town watching from a bus, for me, is the broader version of people watching in restaurants or parks. Its one of the great subtle intrigues that hold my attention on trips like these. We rode for about an hour before Todd finished writing and noticed we were pulling into a Park n Ride. We knew there was a Park n Ride stop right before Atlantic City so we made the split second decision to jump off there. Our thinking was it'd be a far easier place to hitch, and camp if unsuccessful, than in the city. Sound logic, but it turned out the rest stop was not only 20 miles south of the city, but nobody went there either.
As all of the realizations of our new surroundings sank in we decided on an alternate plan. Across the Parkway and a small field was US-9, which paralleled the Garden State. My Mom had also offered to pick us up on Saturday now that we were in Jersey, so we figured we could walk up Route 50 to close the gap some. My hope was that with 50 being a back country road we'd be likely to get a ride offer while walking, and it looked like a decent artery toward the north. We crossed over, found camp quickly and settled in with a nice meal for the next days walking.
Click here for Todd's perspective.
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