Little Delaware

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007
Absecon, New Jersey to Killens Pond, Delaware


135.7 miles
Mostly sunny, windy and cold


Started the drive today with a lovely sight – a street of color! It’s not over yet!!

Saw piles of leaves on the side of the road, and was reminded of something I meant to mention several weeks ago, somewhere I rented a car…saw lots of piles of leaves, and I asked the Enterprise guy about it, partly because a good friend had asked me to take an extra whiff of the smoke of burning leaves for her, and I hadn’t seen any burning. Apparently the City comes by periodically to pick up the piles, then they grind them up and use them as mulch! Great idea!!

Another idiosyncrasy of mine is license plates – I’ve always enjoyed keeping track of plates – started way back when, on road trips when I was a kid. Kept me busy, I guess. Anyway, while all the states seem to have 20 or more plates now (which always makes me feel sorry for the cops!), I’ve only seen two plates in NJ – surely they have more, but either people are too cheap, or they’re too expensive! It’s supposedly a great money making scheme. And they obviously need the money – for the roads, if nothing else!

Did a drive by of Atlantic City this morning. Other than the typical huge glitzy hotels, it’s a pretty skuzzy city. Awful roads, run down buildings, unfinished construction, dirty. The most interesting thing was the five huge windmills as I approached the City, and the nuclear power plant across the Delaware River/Bay.

They do have Las Vegas quality entertainment – Stevie Wonder, Jay Leno, Dierks Bently, Aaron Lewis (whoever he is, covered with tattoos), Patty LaBelle, Travis Tritt, Marie Osmond, Frank Sinatra Jr doing a Sinatra special.

Best part was the riding mower I saw on the way out of town, towing a small trailer with a dog riding along happily!

And then there was the “Video Pipe Store” – huh?

Got my bridge fix again today! Back into Delaware – flat, windy, and big acreage farmland! Headed to the shore for a bit – not a resort area, that’s for sure. No beaches! But they have Christmas tree farms, one offering hand dipped ice cream cones with your Christmas tree.

Several new subdivisions – must be for Dover.

I drove part of the Coastal Heritage Byway, “the mostly rural two-lane road that parallels the western shore of the Delaware winds past a variety of landscapes that are the essence of Delaware: heavy industrial sites, forests, wetlands, tidal and non-tidal marshland, historic towns and quaint villages as well as cultivated fields of corn and soybeans. Route 9 is also rich with the wildlife, wetlands and ecosystems of the Delaware River and Bay estuary,” according to its nomination last year as a Historic Scenic Byway.

Saw several huge flocks of small dark birds, apparently finding something to feed on in the recently turned fields. Huge, as in thousands of birds, all taking flight at the same time and landing enmass!

Turned 30,000 miles this afternoon!