Monday, July 1, 2013

Enjoying the Pacific Shore

June 25- July 8, 2013 River's End RV Park, Chinook,WA
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PETS:
Lyla is a "superstar"! She made it into the local paper...we think. We see her photo and snippet on line, but we can't find the paper anywhere! It's the Lower Columbia, WA edition of The Daily News.
Here's her photo and snippet below
We attended the Doggie Olympic Games in Long Beach, WA. A nice little event, small compared to the doggie events that I've attended in the Tri-State area (NY-NJ-PA), representing Above & Beyond English Setter Rescue. They organized doggie activities to enter (we arrived too late) and try to win "gold" medals. They had
What, No Ducks? Ball Toss           Nadia Comaneci Agility
Rip Van Winkle Sleep Off              Dunking For Dogs
Filla Fuller Brush Shedding             Luciano Pavarotti Commemorative Sing-Off
Babe Ruth Obedience Baseball         I’ve Got Rhythm Musical Sit
Peanut Butter Lick                         Frisbee Throw
Who’s Your Daddy? (What breed mixes your dog is)

You won't find this kind of event at the Jersey Shore. Oh no! Dogs are dirty creatures that carry diseases that could harm their precious (spoiled & entitled) children.
Fun agility contest

Devin looking for a dog to play with

Lab dug out a spot to keep cool

Kites and wind ornaments abound
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SIGHTS:
Long Beach Peninsula is a lovely little quiet line of communities. We are at a  nice quiet park that is next to Baker Bay. Long Beach reminds me of a mini Jersey Shore. Fun Beach, which is a site for Washington's SW Coast boasts, "Just outside the reach of the mighty Pacific, the popular Long Beach Boardwalk stretches for almost half a mile."  Wow! Really? A half a mile?

I remember walking along the connecting boardwalks of Avon-Belmar-Spring Lake, NJ that were about 7 miles long. Wildwood, NJ boardwalk is about 3.5 miles long. Seaside boardwalk is about 2.5 miles long. Both of these boardwalks are full of carnival games, t-shirt shops, local food, etc.
After reading the article below, I am more appreciative of being brought up so close to the Jersey Shore. It was an experience that is unique.
As a young child, living in Asbury Park, NJ, I remember my Mom walking my brother & I the 6 or 7 blocks to the beach. We had to walk through a tunnel first to get to the sand. I remember my brother had a habit of squatting at the water's edge and pooping in his bathing suit. Ewwww!
Then around age 11, we would go to the Belmar, NJ beach with my Nana (Mom's Mom). Nana would pack us snacks and lunch. She used to make us pickle sandwiches, which was white bread, mayo, and bread & butter pickles. Mmmm! To this day, I still enjoy slices of pickles on my sandwiches.
Then during my teenage years, I would spend my days at the beach with my girlfriend, Lynne, whose summer job was to rent out beach umbrellas. We'd spend the day sunbathing with baby oil all over our bodies and playing Spit. Good times.


Yes, on the weekend, the beach would be this crowded.
As a native of the Jersey Shore, you learned to not go anywhere on the weekends in the Summertime.
When I was working the midnight shift in my early 20's, I would head to the beach to sleep. I'd put lots of sunscreen on and cover my face. I'd sleep until about noon and then head home. Also in my 20's was the time to hang out at the boardwalk and people watch or be watched by other people.
As an adult, I have little interest in going to the beach. I prefer pine forests and babbling brooks. But I'm glad for the Jersey Shore experience.

This is a really great article about
"The Boardwalks of Jersey
Wednesday, August 10, 2005 

Nobody does boardwalks like New Jersey. With all due respect to Coney Island and Virginia Beach, no place in the country matches the breadth and depth of boardwalk culture found along the Jersey Shore. This coastal institution was invented in Atlantic City in 1870 to keep people from dragging sand into the hotels along the beach. In the years since, Jersey boardwalks have given the world both salt-water taffy and Springsteen. The state's 127-mile coastline hosts an eclectic mix of boardwalks ranging from wholesome to honky-tonk. Below is a south-to-north tour of five of the state's six most famous seaside promenades. (Atlantic City is excluded, in part because its boardwalk has been Trumped by casinos as the town's main draw.)

-- Jeff Schlegel

WILDWOOD. People come to Wildwood for its beaches -- the widest and cheapest (i.e., free) in New Jersey -- for the scores of 1950s-era doo-wop motels that sport space-age angles of Jetsonian proportions, and for the boardwalk, a roughly three-mile-long human circus of noise, junk food and amusement rides. The boardwalk -- part honky-tonk, part family playground -- has a few quirks that give it an endearing quality. The bocce court with Italian music playing on the loudspeaker and the Boardwalk Chapel, between a tattoo parlor and a pizza parlor, has been the voice in the carny wilderness for 61 years. Barkers offer passers-by the chance to touch live sharks or fire paintballs at live targets. Vendors sell T-shirts with bawdy messages, and there's no shortage of pizza and soft custard.

Despite development pressures, Wildwood is trying to preserve its roughly 150 doo-wop buildings and the heritage of its golden days from the '50s and '60s, when it was a music hot spot.

"We claim that Wildwood is the birthplace of rock-and-roll," says Paul Russo, owner of the retro-'50s themed Cool Scoops ice cream parlor in North Wildwood. Bill Haley fired the opening salvo of a musical and cultural revolution when he and his Comets played "Rock Around the Clock" for the first time in public at the HofBrau Hotel in 1954. And Chubby Checker did "The Twist" for the first time in 1960 at the Rainbow Club. In October, the boardwalk's convention center will host the second annual Wildwoods Fabulous Fifties Weekend featuring Checker and Buddy Holly's original Crickets. 800-992-9732, http://www.wildwoodsnj.com/ .

OCEAN CITY. This attractive resort has never dispensed a drop of alcohol. Founded in 1879 by a group of Methodist preachers as a Christian retreat and camp meeting place, Ocean City remains a dry town and is quite proud of it, thank you. "We roll up the sidewalks at midnight," says Elaine Burton, store manager at Fralinger's Salt Water Taffy. Keeps out the riffraff, says Burton, who touted such wholesome boardwalk happenings as the baby parade, hermit crab races, french-fry and taffy-sculpting contests, and classical concerts and plays on the Music Pier. Ocean City is short on booze but not on fun. The wide, two-mile-long boardwalk is crammed with arcades, mini golf, souvenir shops and rides.

The central boardwalk is a hotbed of salt-water taffy, including Fralinger's at 11th Street and Shriver's Salt Water Taffy and Fudge at Ninth Street. Shriver's has a Victorian feel, along with a glass-enclosed room where visitors can watch taffy and fudge being made. Any notion of a nasty taffy tiff among rivals is quickly dispelled by a clerk at Shriver's. "We're all one big happy family," she says.

And for those in need of adult beverages, the Circle Liquor Store is conveniently located in Somers Point at the entrance to the bridge to Ocean City. 800-232-2465, http://www.oceancity-nj.com.

SEASIDE. It's known as Jersey's lowbrow boardwalk town, a teen haven and blue-collar summer retreat that's long on tacky and short on good taste. On the plus side, it was home to MTV's summer beach house in 1999 and 2002, and it made Surfer magazine's list of top 10 surfer towns. The boardwalk ambiance here is heavy on the carny, but it's also an unpretentious atmosphere that screams "Loosen up and enjoy." That's summed up at the Bamboo Bar on the Boulevard in Seaside Heights, where a sign reads, "Helping ugly people get lucky since 1941." At about three miles, the boardwalk passes through both Seaside Heights and Seaside Park, with the rides and stands on the Heights end. The Funtown Amusement Pier is noted for the Tower of Fear, a 225-foot-tall ride that takes you straight up and then teases you by vacillating up and down before free-falling back to earth. The Casino Pier is home to a gorgeous carousel, a 90-year-old masterpiece of 58 elaborately hand-carved animals, intricate trim and whirling carnival music from a Wurlitzer military band organ.

Along the boardwalk, the aroma of sausage, funnel cake and pork roll is a constant yet pleasing presence. This is no place for dieters, and after sampling a fried Oreo at Cuzin's Freedom Fries, I ventured to 3 Brothers From Italy for slices of Sicilian pizza. The sand on the floor seemed to defeat the original purpose of a boardwalk. 800-732-7467, http://www.seasideheightstourism.com.

POINT PLEASANT BEACH. In essence, Jenkinson's Boardwalk is Point Pleasant Beach. The boardwalk stretches about a mile south from the Manasquan Inlet, and the section with entertainment and dining facilities is only about a third of its total length. Within this short space are a food court, sushi bar and full-service restaurant in Jenkinson's Pavilion. There's also Jenkinson's Aquarium, as well as the Jenk's nightclub. The boardwalk also features a fun house, four arcades, three mini-golf courses and an amusement park with 27 rides.

Point Pleasant Beach bills itself as family-oriented. It offers children's beach shows on Monday evenings, family games (a version of the old "Beat the Clock" game show) on the beach on Tuesday evenings, and Radio Disney concerts on the beach Wednesdays. Sunday nights it shows family movies on the beach. The town owns the boardwalk, but the beach is owned by an assortment of private entities who charge admission. The owners of Jenkinson's Beach (not the Jenkinsons, by the way) control the biggest slice, and they operate most of the boardwalk businesses above their beach. That's commonly called Jenkinson's Boardwalk. 732-892-0600, http://www.pointpleasantbeach.com.

ASBURY PARK. Two words summarize this once-grand resort: abandonment and Springsteen. The former is evident on the north end, where the beach is fairly quiet and the boardwalk almost completely empty. Changing times and race riots in 1970 had left Asbury Park a faded, seedy remnant of its storied past by the time local hero Bruce Springsteen sang about it. Places made famous by Springsteen -- Palace Amusements from "Born to Run," the Casino from "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" -- are demolished or in utter disrepair, respectively. But on the south end, there are tentative signs of life as you pass through the enclosed walkway between the restored 1930s Beaux-Arts convention hall and Paramount Theatre buildings. The nearby Fifth Avenue Pavilion is fully open with vendors selling food and sundries, including pizza and portobello mushroom wrap sandwiches at the Beach Place. There is optimism in the air.

"I'm bullish on Asbury Park," says Ed Gasper, owner of the Beach Place.

Gasper says three of the boardwalk's eight pavilions are open, and he believes the town is in the early stages of a turnaround that will eventually attract enough visitors to entice developers to follow through on grandiose plans, such as turning the derelict Casino site into a modern entertainment magnet. In 2004, the mile-long boardwalk was rebuilt. This year the Casino walkway connecting Asbury Park's boardwalk with neighboring Ocean Grove was reopened. Officials say the town saw a 15 percent jump in beach and boardwalk revenue in the past two years, and construction vehicles buzz near the boardwalk, working on shorefront residential projects. Asbury Park is a reinvention in progress, with condos under construction selling for $1 million while the city languishes with some of the state's worst poverty and unemployment levels. 732-775-7676, http://www.cityofasburypark.com/ ."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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WWW://
I'm sorry to say, but I am going to have to return to using the word verification security for comments. Anonymous is a prolific commenter with useless or inappropriate info. It has gotten to the point that Anonymous has become a stalker. It follows all my blog posts and is trying to be the center of attention.
I have to delete about 25-30 of this shameless self promoter's comments every day!

I only allowed anonymous because one of my friends said she would like to post comments, but didn't want to show her name.  Well, she has never commented, so no need for my stalking anonymous to be able to do so anymore. I'm taking my blog comments back under my control.
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CRAFTS:
I finished my Sunhat. Most people knit or crochet a summer hat with cotton yarn, but that just makes for a floppy hat. I wanted a stiffer hat so the brim would stay put and block the sun.
I bought household twine from Walmart and it worked out beautifully! The twine I bought was Lehigh Household Twine, 45M, 150ft. for under $2.00 per roll. I used 4 full rolls, which came out to under $8.00 for the project and  200 yds. of fingering to sport weight twine. I used an "E" hook.

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AUDIO BOOK REVIEW:
Speaks the Nightbird (Matthew Corbett #1)Speaks the Nightbird by Robert R. McCammon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoy historical novels. This did not disappoint, although was somewhat drawn out at times.
In 1699 a young woman is convicted of being a witch and destined to be burned at the stake.
A magistrate's assistant is determined to prove her innocence. But he is the ONLY one who believes in her innocence. Is she truly innocent or is his opinion skewed by her beauty.
A good story, but also very depressing.



View all my reviews
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WHERE WE'RE GOING:

July 9-17, 2013 Port. Hudson RV Park, Port Townsend, WA
July 18-20, 2013 Elwha Dam RV Park, Port Angeles, WA
Tentative:
Neah Bay, WA
La Push, WA
Coeur d'Alene, ID

ID, MT, ND, SD, WY, then south for the Winter of 2013/214

3 comments:

  1. Way to go Lyla - CUTE!!!! What a beautiful spot you are in....and sweet pickles! Yes, please!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lyla you are very cute!! love your pics . thanks for sharing it with us!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for the compliment. She is a beautiful dog.

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