What to do when it's your 9th wedding anniversary? You wouldn't think of loading up the the family ride with the kids and the dogs and heading to Cape May but that's what we did. It's funny as you get older the things you realize and miss. I know for Theresa and I the whole "Empty Nest" thing is something we really have a hard time getting used to. Kids, well first we love them, most of the time, but are a real pain in the ass, and we spend most of our time as the grow up figuring out how to get away from them. And then they leave and we try and figure out how to get them back, even for a meal.
So on Thursday night we decided to celebrate 9 years of marital bliss. I'm alway amazed when people say they've been married for 50 years and never had an argument, a bicker session, or a drag out fight. At the end of the school year I received a gift card from a student to one of our favorite places in The Swan in Lambertville. So, in keeping with trying to lure the kids back, we invited Erin and Lauren to join us. One of the best things about getting old is being able to watch your kids rolling into adulthood. Additionally, it's nice to watch the sibling relationships kind of take a turn back in time as they reminisce and act like kids again.
And as far as marriage. I don't think marriage is tough as long as you picked someone who is close enough to you and you're both willing to negotiate and work things out. The biggest problem with marriage is all the shit in life that gets in the way. Kids, money, jobs, health, and future plans. Plus there's always the baggage we drag around from our childhood and previous marriages and lives. It can be tough to manage all of that yet alone your own stuff and your partners as well.
So in continuing our anniversary weekend we loaded up the girls and the dogs and picked up our nephew Evan and headed south. The dogs. The f'in dogs. I like the dogs. I take care of the dogs. I try to be a good dog dad. I'm done with the dogs. You can't do anything, at least easily, when you have them.
Cape May has been a thing in our family for decades, like going back to the 1980's, and maybe even before that. My parents started with Wildwood and then eventually called Wildwood Crest and Diamond Beach and Seapointe Village our annual weekly home away from home each year. There are tons of pictures from those trips stacked in bins and photo albums somewhere in my parents basement since the early days before cell phones and digital images. Below are a few pics from a trip in 2006
when Erin was just a year old and Sean was seven. Looking below you can see that Erin isn't a tot anymore and how grown up she and Lauren have become. Like all of the "stuff" that we accumulate over
the years, and desperately need to get rid of, the memories and rituals of things like family vacations are etched in our minds and hearts and, sometimes, become things passed down from generation to generation. So it was no surprise that as my parents stopped with the yearly vacations to the Cape May area I picked up the torch and kept that going. While Theresa and I couldn't plant our own roots at Seapointe Village, where condos there start at around $1,000,000 we found something up our financial alley on the mainland in Lower Township. At least it's the same town. In 2018 we purchased a travel trailer for $3,500 off of Facebook Marketplace and started doing the camping thing. It was fun when we got down there but I hated looking at it 11-plus months out of the year sitting in the yard and the back
and forth just wasn't for us. Then Theresa found Cape Island Resort in July 2020. It's a seasonal resort made up of 700 park model homes just a mile from Cape May. It seemed to be right up our alley. For some reason the prices there were at an all time low and for an asking price of $14,000 it seemed a
perfect price point for us. In the end we paid $11,000 and were on the hook for the $4,500 fee for the May 1st to November 1st season. We quickly sold our trailer and I sold my newer Ford F-150 to get it done. Over the last four years we have done a ton of work there and have been rewarded with some great
weekends and weeks alone and with the kids. Friends and family have used it as well so it's been a win all the way around, until.... What was once a family owned and operated resort has now been sold to Legacy, a huge conglomerate of similar type places around the country. And when things go corporate so do the prices. They jacked the rental fees from $4,500 to now $9,300 in just four short years. While some say, or argue, "Go and try and rent a place in Wildwood Crest or Cape May for a week", which could set you back $6,500, it's still a lot of money for our "Shore House". So what to do? We are on a three-year exodus plan from New Jersey heading down to Hilton Head. We could keep this and spend six months, in whole or part, in Cape May, which isn't a bad thing, and do our family visiting while escaping the hottest times of year in the Low Country. We could tow the line and have it for us to use as well as for kids and maybe their families to use going forward. But then is it their responsibility to take the reins in to use, upkeep, and pay the freight? It's a real tough decision. And kids don't all think like us.
How many of us grew up with second homes, camps, and shacks in our family? In the 1990's I purchased two homes in Big Bass Lake in Gouldsboro, Pa. After we sold them it was off to the Adirondacks for a couple of homes which eventually got sold as well. In family conversations going back forever how many have heard, "Why did they sell?", or, "They should have just kept it". "Imagine what it would be worth today?". It's all easy to say, but in the end someone has to use it and pay for it.
Let's just say 10-grand a year. That's a lot of money. Smart people would say imagine if you invested that for your future. True. By age 70 we would have some money to get us through the Golden Years? But what price do you put on living now, while you're able, along with the value of instilling in your kids the importance of family and family stuff like this. That may be priceless. What my parents offered me as far as opportunities and experiences must have had a positive effect on my DNA because I continue to try and relive it and pass it down the line.
What is funny is, we pretty much hate the beach. Don't like the sun and hot either. We are the two who shelter in place on beach chairs with overhead awnings situated under a large beach umbrella, or two if needed. A day or two a summer is just fine. God bless those sun worshippers and ocean swimmers, we're good for a quick dip before retreating back to the shade. But maybe when the grandkids come, if they do, we'll be different. But this weekend we did our annual thing. We have all
the beach stuff, and I might say we do a really good job getting down there and setting up. Look at that set up, five beach chairs- two with awnings, two beach umbrellas, four of those bamboo things you lay on, and beach toys for the sand castles that were never built. My thoughts about having a place down the
shore, or not, all went to the positive when I rolled up and saw the above crew waiting for us to join them at the Newark Avenue beach entrance. They paid for parking on Atlantic Avenue, we parked for free and huffed it the two blocks to meet them. To me the above pic is iconic. Maybe not iconic like when the sailor kissed the nurse at Times Square after WWII or when they raised the flag at Iwo Jima or at the World Trade Center, but personally iconic in its own right. Three adults, 18, 19, 22, well really kids, holding their beach bags and toys ready for a day at the beach in 2024. Wait till they pull that pic out in say twenty years, maybe after my days here on this earth are done. What memories they'll have.
I spent part of the beach day reviewing for this upcoming fall semester. It's coming soon, in fact it's starting to feel like fall already. July is really summer and August is the transitional month as kids get
get ready to head back to college and teachers anticipate the start of a new year. The equator like temperatures have subsided and the leaves are even starting to drop here and there. June went into July and soon into August. 2024 will soon be 2025. It was over a month ago that Theresa and I were down in Hilton Head proclaiming this is where the next chapter of our lives will hopefully be. But what have I done to get ready for it, like really done? Yes, I've picked up sticks in the yard, mowed the grass, and moved things from one place to another, but if this is going down in less than three years I've got to start moving, like really moving. When you continue to do the same things each day you tend to move sideways and not forward.
Over the weekend we hit the pool, hit the beach, caught a sunrise, and part of the sunset. We ate at home, and since this was "the vacation" we did the go out to dinner, and lunch, thing as well. I don't
remember my Dad having the same nauseous look on his face when he would take us out to eat. Dad just paid. I never looked at the bill. It was just what you did when on vacation. Going out to eat was just as much as a continuation of the hang as it was to fill a physiologic need to satiate our hunger. But I'm not like my Dad. While I love going out to eat I just can't not think about how much food costs, and most times, average to shitty food costs as well. We just take it, "Yeah, it was okay", after dropping a couple hundred including a 20% tip. But it's all part of it. We did our best
to spend wisely without coming off as cheap. As I sit here I can't recall all the meals we ate and where, but a quick glance at the bank statements quickly put it in the forefront of my hippocampus, the part of the brain that handles short-term memory. A couple of beers, a few apps, some salads, and a few entrees
and you're talking over $200 with the tip. Britton's Bakery in Wildwood Crest will set you back $25 and ice cream at Fleck's $30. All good in the end. We barbecued one night and made breakfast each morning but still probably spend $700 on food over the four day weekend. While some of it is just tourist trap dining the real value to me is being in the moment and watching your gang, as well as the other gangs, enjoy time with their families in a place that is your old go-to or a newly discovered adventure. The kids have done this circuit for years so when they say, "We have to go to Britton' s and Two Mile Landing", it's not just for the food as much as it is to continue reliving the memories that have a special place in their minds. Erin ordered three #1 crabs, not cleaned, which ran $24. While I sat across from her watching her use her learned techniques on how to get all the meat I couldn't help but think how many we could catch with a couple of drop lines and a few pieces of bunker or chicken. But then I'd have to buy the butter, and the Old Bay, and stink up the house, and then clean up. Maybe one day she'll be sitting where I was looking across the table to her own family and child. If I'm lucky to be there to watch it then the $10,000 a year we spend would have been all worth it. And we have six kids so hopefully some of them get it and can enjoy it as we did this weekend.
The weekend was a good one. I needed that. Now it's time to get to work in more ways than one.