AN EVENT PACKED DAY

I tried to post yesterday, but couldn't get on the wifi.  But here I am now.  So much happened yesterday that it was like three days packed into one.  It began with a beautiful sunrise.

This was followed by Joe having his second chance to preach the sermon at church.  Pastor Justin was away celebrating his second wedding  anniversary to his lovely wife Cherie.  So Joe volunteered to take over.



Joe and Elder Rich going over the order of service.



E

Elders Shawn, Rich and Joe.



Joe giving the message.

 OK, I probably shouldn't have been taking a picture while he was preaching, but I wanted to remember it.  His message will be up on youtube sometime this week and I will put a link to it.

After church we went home to get ready to go away.  Finally we were going to go down the shore.  (Yes, in Philly we say "down the shore", not "down TO the shore".  I have no idea why.)   I walked into the kitchen and saw the recycling, so decided to dump it in the bin outside.  When I opened the back door I saw a groundhog race across the yard and disappear.  I told Joe and he said to try to get a picture of it.  Well I discovered that not only does it like our yard, but it has made a burrow and is living under one of my rosebushes.


The burrow.



It's cute.  You can just see it's nose peeking out of the burrow.

 Even though it is cute, I don't want it ruining my yard or undermining the wall that keeps my neighbor's yard from falling into mine.  So when we get home we will call the State Wildlife and see if they can humanely remove it and relocate it to someplace better.  The middle of the city is no place for a little groundhog.

We finally got ourselves together and took off for Ocean City.  Here we are going over the Betsy Ross Bridge.  One end of the bridge is four blocks from our house.  The other is in Jersey.

In all the packing and getting things together we never bothered to eat.  So by the time we got to Marlton, NJ it was around 5 p.m. and we were kind of hungry.  Joe had started out driving, but was getting tired and we wanted to switch, so we pulled into a strip mall parking lot.  While we were there we decided to eat.  So we drove around looking at what was available to us there.  We decided on a pizza/sandwich shop called Pat's.

It was a little pricy, but well worth it.  The place was spotless and the food was great.  I had a steak sandwich, Joe a cheesesteak and we split an order of onion rings.  We are thinking of going back there once in awhile just to eat there.  Everything was good.  And the place was super modern looking.  There was a real 21st century feel about it.


Joe being silly



I loved these chairs.



Not bad of me.

It doesn't take that long to get to the shore -- about an hour and a half.  I love it when we get to the causeway and the Rainbow Islands.  I know we are there then.  And the bridge over the causeway is finally finished after six years.  Yea!

It is always exciting to see Ocean City spread out in front of you.

When we got to the hotel, our friend Carol had been there and left but left a brochure from her favorite restaurant for us.  And our friends Karen and Bud were already here and had been to the beach and played miniature golf.  We met up with them and tried to decide where to have dinner.

We ended up going to the boardwalk and going down a few blocks.  It felt like a few miles because my foot has been hurting me so much.  The sun was setting by the time we got to the boardwalk.  It was so pretty.

 We saw lots of people carrying huge balloons.  Some of them were 6 foot tall salt water taffies.  We threatened to make Karen buy one and carry it around.  Ha, ha.  And we saw "Mr. Fry" the mascot of one of Jilly's food stands.  Joe waved to him but he didn't respond.  I don't think the person inside could see anything.  A lady was leading Mr. Fry around as if he were blind.

Karen wanted Mexican food, but it was take away with no place to sit, so we ended up at Primavera's and had a great Italian meal.

I loved this little fish kite flying out over the water.

There was a guy sitting in the pavillion across the street from the restaurant playing his guitar.  Such a mellow evening.

It was getting late, so we headed back to the hotel.  

But the skies were not just dark with night.  It started raining.  Then it started pouring.  By the time we got back we were soaked.  So that's how our first day at the shore went.  Today looks good.  We are getting ready and heading out to breakfast.  Part two of the journey will come later tonight.