So it’s vacation time!

It’s mid to late June and we are heading out for a good old fashioned fly by the seat of our pants road trip, we are taking this trip in Anthony Bourdain style; no reservations!

We are heading down and will be spending a good deal of the trip in North Carolina, but we need to get that far first, we are spending time in the tiny little state of Delaware for a night, and then down through the Delmarva Peninsula and over a really expensive bridge, and into Virginia before getting to North Carolina, staying with friends in Raleigh for a night and then heading back up north through the Blue Ridge mountains, into Pennsylvania and then back home.

So today was day one of our trip, this is basically a beat feet day to get through all the boring places I drive through all the time, or places we have no interest in really seeing anything special in, it’s a quick trip out the Mass Pike, down 84, down 91, down the Wilbur Cross and Merritt parkways, over the Tappen Zee Bridge, past the massive Palisades Mall, to the Garden State Parkway, head south to the Jersey Turnpike, and then over the Delaware Memorial Bridge into the great state of Delaware. Maybe I will start an LLC while I am here, seems like that’s what everyone does in Delaware.

The trip down was good overall, no major traffic delays except coming up to the Tappen Zee Bridge, it mentioned roadwork so there were going to be some delays, I had no problem with that, although it took about 45 minutes to go about 5 miles which normally takes less than 5 minutes. I only got really annoyed when it was determined that there was no road work and the delay was just because all the stupid people seem to have a whole lot of trouble merging because of a lane drop from 4 to 3. Even with less than 500 feet of lane left, people were still jumping into the lane that was ending to try to shoot up ahead of other people.

One interesting thing we saw during this portion of the trip was a white Mitsubishi Lancer, which had a unique graphic on the rear window of the heavily tinted windows. What was this graphic you ask? Why it was a graphic which depicted “the shocker”, you either know it or you don’t, if you don’t then be glad. Go right ahead and call me a grumpy old man and I can tell you to get off my lawn, but what kind of tool actually puts something like that on the rear window of their car? Not only that, but he also had a custom overlay on his rear idiot light break light on his trunk that reads “suck it” in red when he hits the brakes. CLASSY!

So some things we noticed on the trip so far…

Douches on Motorcycles, apparently lots of people seem to think it’s smart to travel at 90+MPH on a sport bike weaving in and out of traffic, wearing sneakers, nylon shorts, and sleeveless t shirts, but hey, at least they had on a helmet so their brains won’t get splattered while they rip a dozen or so layers of skin off the rest of their body when they dump the bike.

They are expanding a lot of the southern part of the Jersey Turnpike, this appears to involve a lot of bridge building, the only problem I see is that a majority of the bridges they appear to be building have nothing to connect to them, no roads anywhere close to them that need to go over the highway. Governor Christie taking a page from Sarah Palin with bridges to nowhere?

Delaware is a state with apparently a whole lot of gun shops, tobacco shops, title loan shops, and pawn shops. Seems a bit depressed, but then you have the strip joints to make up for it, but it appears as though they can only take off their tops in those, so just a bit more depressing in there.

One interesting thing about the Delaware Memorial Bridge compared to other bridges I have seen, and driven over on this trip, there wasn’t even a minor attempt at putting up a fence or any type of blockade to prevent people from jumping, not even a Samaritans hotline number.

Delaware apparently has some problems with minors drinking, I have seem at least 6 different billboards all with the same ad on them; it’s an ad to remind people who buy alcohol that it’s illegal to give it to someone underage. Kinda makes you wonder what’s going on if they need to have a billboard ad campaign to remind people they can’t do that.

We have seen a bit of wildlife along the way, we tried to take some smaller roadways at times to make the scenery a little nicer for this reason. Unfortunately the majority of wildlife we saw was “sleeping” on the side of the road. Off the top of my head there were 4 possum, 2 raccoons, 1 cat, 2 deer, and a few things which even dental records won’t be able to identify. Although it was not all bad, we did see a lot of large birds like hawks, a few deer with a baby just south of Dover AFB, and something which was seen so quickly it could not actually be identified; Possibly a possum, rabbit, or badger.

So we got down to the Dover area, and we needed to find a place to stay, we found a couple listings online in the price range we wanted, unfortunately all the mom and pops were just way too too sketch, so we tried a couple more mainstream and the first few had no rooms, then the Sleep hotel might have rooms, but we had to wait til 6 to see if any actually would be available. Apparently they were on hold til 6, but if people didn’t check in by then they lose their room. So we checked out another hotel while killing 15 minutes to see if any would be free, the Holiday Inn Express only had smoking rooms, so that would have been no good at all. Back to the Sleep. We waited, we checked, we got a room! YAY, day one and we weren’t sleeping in the car, we haven’t failed yet!

So we got our room, went up and chilled for a bit, then checked out online where to head for dinner, we ended up picking a place called McGlynns here in Dover on Lake Silver. It was great! A tad loud but there was no wait for a table and we got a booth even, so not bad. It was a bit dark with all the old stained hardwood everywhere, but nice overall and a nice view on the water and the menu looked great. I had the sliced flank steak with garlic mashed potatoes, some steamed vegetables, and corn bread. It was great and the the flavors were nice, the cornbread was crumbly but wasn’t super dry, the mashed potatoes has a slightly odd texture but were delicious all around. Kate got the shrimp and grits, which also came with andouille sausage and garlic bread. This was awesome too, spicy sausage and the grits were cooked really really well. The garlic bread was huge but tasty.

Totally a dinner win after a total lunch lose.

Now to figure out our travel route for tomorrow and see what other interesting stuff awaits us in Delaware and into Maryland…