Summer Has Only Just Begun
The first day of Summer was this week and the weather has really perked up as a result. Currently we are resting at a scorching 35 °C on the daily, which would be great if I didn’t have to wear long trousers for work. About 2 weeks ago I spent the weekend on the New Jersey coast enjoying the start of summer celebration: Skimmer Weekend. We drove 7 hours to get to Katy’s Grandma’s house. ‘We’ being Katy (a friend I met whilst at the lab) and Sarah (Katy’s housemate) and myself. We left after Sarah finished work on Thursday, so we arrived at 2:30am on Friday, it was quite a drive.
Grandma Gail’s house was almost directly on the marsh, easily a stone’s through, in fact I could’ve probably thrown Katy that distance. So, every evening we got to watch a phenomenal sunset! There were birds and animals all over the place including a tortoise which we watched crossing the road. There were also no bugs, which was probably due to the 100 mph winds that we experienced, just kidding the winds were only about 20 mph but Sarah and I got hit by a chair that was caught by the wind so it felt like the winds were much worse.
As we were there for a 3 full days, we had plenty of things planned. The Friday was spent at the Cape May Zoo where we got to see a bunch of your typical zoo animals: Lemurs, Lions, Leopards and the like. The zoo was free and although the enclosures were a little smaller than I would have liked, the animals did not seem particularly unhappy. After eating, we went to the Cape May Lighthouse and took artsy pictures on the beach. It was beautiful on the beach and the little coastal area had a visitor centre and small museum which we checked out on the way back to the house.
When we got back, Katy’s family members had already started to arrive. I got to meet her 3 sisters and her brother and her brother-in-law and soon-to-be-brother-in-law and finally her little niece. I had already been introduced to her Grandma the previous day and met Katy’s parents at her graduation in May. So, in summary, I met a lot of people. That evening was spent catching up and drinking, we ordered in food and played video games on a Nintendo 64 imitation console.
Saturday was the day of the official fair, we walked up and down the boardwalk enjoying the stalls and beautiful weather. We stopped at a bar for drinks and got to go into some cute touristy stores before meeting back up with everyone else for food. The rest of the day was spent playing games and hanging out.
The next day we spent the morning at the beach. Although it was windy, some of us played Spikeball and I enjoyed walking along the shoreline even though the water was a little chilly. After taking some beach pictures we walked back to the house to shower and relax. For dinner, we had food on the grill which was delicious and spent more time chatting before getting a load more sunset pictures and getting an early night.
We drove back to Raleigh the next day, it took an extra hour due to traffic but for the most part it was a pretty easy drive. Unfortunately, we all had to work the next day so after getting back to Katy’s apartment we all chilled before crashing. Just a small sample of New Jersey that weekend, which I will be adding to this weekend.
