Reminder to self: Bike at the Jersey Shore during the off-season.
Rentals close to the beach are cheap, streets are empty, though yes lots of businesses are closed. (Our group based itself in Avalon.) But boardwalks during Easter week were busy, especially when temperatures hit 80. That’s where we ended up in our search for ice cream.
We visited Lucy the Elephant, just reopened after a lengthy restoration. I’ve learned a word I am sure will come in handy one day for Spelling Bee: howdah. That’s the covered (seating) area on Lucy’s back. The tour takes you inside Lucy and then up to the howdah. It has a glass floor, so avoid a skirt/dress that day.
Here’s the beach through Lucy’s right eye:
There’s quite a story to Lucy, who dates back to 1881 (that’s 16 years after the Civil War, not 12 like the guide says; know-it-all me had to tell him, not that he changed his script) and whose 90 tons were slowly moved two blocks down the road decades ago.
There’s that British family that lived inside her during the summer of 1903 (we saw a tiny tiny bathtub but no toilet or running water — all sounds crazy to me), those wild days before Prohibition (see the bottle they found), and then Superstorm Sandy, during which she somehow only got wet feet. And then this latest restoration, which took longer and cost more than expected, in part because the state historical commission insisted that it use the paint that costs $400+ a gallon instead of a cheaper solution… And, yes, the amount of work needed to fix her up was also more extensive than initially believed.
Here are some other photo ops:
You see why I think Cape May County’s trail needs something that screams selfie?
Wildwood’s architecture is much more interesting than rental after rental that we saw in other Shore towns. Here’s one business:
Trees by the dunes in Avalon were full of these birds. We had to stop. They ignored us. I think they are white ibises:
Sorry, no photos of the dolphins off the Ocean City boardwalk.
I did get up early one day to catch a sunrise:
Exploring by bicycle 