We wisely left New Jersey in the evening to avoid the traffic. Ever since Portsmouth, New Hampshire, we have been dealing with nearly unbearable amounts of traffic. It seems to be never ending but I think we are starting to see it ease up as we making our way down towards the Delmarva Peninsula. Before that, we are heading back into Pennsylvania for a visit to Philadelphia.
Rather than finding a campsite and spending a few days here, we decided to make Philly a day trip. We found some paid oversize parking beneath the freeway overpasses that was walking distance to downtown.
Philadelphia is of course another city that is jammed full of American history. We are here once again to earn a Junior Ranger badge and take a gander at that old Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. On the way in, we walked by the Betsy Ross House. Marlene had just gone over the Betsy Ross story with the girls so she casually asked them if they knew who she was. They looked at her with blank stares and then out of no where, we heard a little boy say, ‘The Flag!’. Where did Luka pull that one out of?!
While we are here, we are also going to get ourselves at least one original cheesesteak. I like mine ‘with’ and ‘whiz’.
This is Sonny’s Cheesesteak. It’s not the oldest in town but it is damn good.
Philadelphia is a pretty incredible city. Especially when you consider all that has happened here.
Here is Independence Hall. Some of the most important documents in modern human history were signed here.
This is that bell. Maybe you’ve seen of picture or two of it before.
We took a tour of Independence Hall and it was pretty amazing to be inside this building.
It has been through many changes over the years but the National Park Service who runs it now has brought it back to its appearance in 1776.
If you haven’t seen the John Adams mini series on HBO, go take a look. I decided to watch it while we were in the area and it made all of these locations that much more special.
Here is Marlene and Ava doing their best Phillie Phanatic impersonation.
In the visitor center, we also got to view one of the original prints of the Declaration of Independence. It was printed and distributed in 1776. Only 26 are known in existence. It on display only during the peak season and a facsimile is placed there through the winter. The display case is shaded and darkened as to protect it from UV damage.
Our stay in Philly was short but we were desperate to find less crowded places so we headed south into Delaware.
Delaware being the first state in the union we expected it to have some pretty cool National Park sites. When we looked into it, there was only First State National Monument in New Castle so we headed over there.
It turns out, only until 2013 was this even a National Park site. It is so new that there isn’t even any literature for us to take and read. We took a short guided tour which gave us some insight of the historical significance of the former courthouse that is the visitor center.
On the property there was also a small cemetery.
We kept looking around for old grave stones and this is probably one of the oldest we saw dating back to 1765.
We were a little bummed that there was not a Junior Ranger program yet for the kids to earn.
But on the positive note, there was a ton of old gift shop swag that had been taken off of the shelves while they are figuring out what to do next.
Our tour guide graciously gathered up a few things to give the kids as souvenirs.
Outside of New Castle, Delaware, we are back to the ole Elks Lodge for some cheap dry camping.
Our next stop in Delaware is Rehoboth Beach. This is a spot that is popular with the tourist crowd. We knew that camping was once again going to be difficult so, you guessed it, another Elks.
We really scored with this one. We had this giant field next to us and it had electric and water hookups while being minutes away from Rehoboth Beach.
Probably one of the main reasons for us to be here is to visit Dog Fish Head Brewery. We got here a little late in the day and the tours were all booked. We happily resorted to just tasting the beers instead.
This is Dogfish Head’s 120-minute IPA. I had to sit down for this one at 18% ABV.
It was a warm way here in Delaware but with free beers in hand, we happily spent the afternoon outside playing our favorite ball in a pit game of bocce.
Marlene’s dad is a world class bocce player. You can almost see his championship form in Luka.
Throwing sandbags into a beer box. That’s an original #malimishsisters game.
Box on the head game. Wait a minute, did someone give Mila some IPA?
Luka didn’t read the instructions for corn hole but I am not going to worry about it.
While we are here, we have to make it out to the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk at least once.
Let me tell you, the parking situation is horrendous. There has got to be a better way.
Eventually we did find a spot and made our way down to the water.
We walked all the way to the north end to find some open space in the sand to spend one of our last nights here before moving on.
As we were leaving Rehoboth, we have to think hard about where we were going next. We have really had it with traffic but had a hard time deciding if going to Washington DC was worth the hassle. Ultimately, we decided against it. DC is really not a place to visit with an RV as there are no easy places to camp. One day we will just have to go back and stay in a hotel for a week and pay DC a visit. For now, we will continue charging down the Delmarva peninsula.
If you didn’t know, the name Delmarva is a portmanteau of DELaware, MARyland and VirginiA. All three states have a spot here on the peninsula and our plan is to skip DC and make our way down to the bottom and drive across the Chesapeake Bridge.
These horses are residents of Assateague Island National Seashore here in the Maryland portion of the peninsula.
It is still the busy summer season here so we were unable to get a campsite here on Assateague Island.
It is actually Labor Day weekend here so hopefully after this, we will have a much easier time with crowds.
We have been told and seen pictures of wild Assateague Island horses roaming along the beach. Unfortunately on this weekend, it was so crowded that there was no room for the horses to be.
We did see a lot of them just hanging out on the side of the road as we were driving. These wild horses are so use to having people around, they don’t even notice us any more.
Another NPS Junior Ranger badge in the bag for the girls.
After a couple of nights in Maryland, we are heading into Virginia. This will be the last state on the Atlantic coast before we starting heading west.
over and out,
dan
0 Comments