I slept so hard last night that it hurt. Seriously, my body woke up sore. I also kept waking up totally freaked out about where I was. After a while consciousness would really set in and I would calm back down.
We had a New Jersey breakfast; pork rolls. I’m hooked. They were incredibly delicious. You take sesame buns, fry up “pork roll” slices, put pepper jack cheese in between the meat slices, a fried egg on top of the meat, and eat it all as a breakfast sandwich. Really, I may need to order pork roll online when I get home. It was that good.
We left the house around 11:30a to run errands. First Target to exchange our portable speaker we bought. The experience with Target was the total opposite of what the experience with REI was. We were explaining what we needed and why we didn’t have a receipt and basically the lady at the customer service desk interrupted us and said, “Just run back and grab another one. It doesn’t matter what color if you want a different color too. Just bring it back and we’ll take care of you.” It was that easy. I wanted to hug her for making it so easy. After REI, I was expecting a fight. Instead, we got a quick, helpful exchange. I’m glad too, because I love Target. I didn’t want to be disappointed by them!
After Target we resupplied at Walmart. Our carts were full of food for the next four days. Most of it is the same as what we always get. Some of it was different. But there’s security in the same rhythm. We moved faster through the store – like elite soldiers, we knew exactly where we needed to hit.
It was still early afternoon when we started making our way out to Long Beach Island (LBI). We stopped by the store first for drinks. Then put our name in to a restaurant we’ve been dreaming of for hundreds of miles (no joke). The Chicken or the Egg… otherwise known as Chegg. Snow Monkey and Wonder Woman have been bragging this place up for a long time now. When we knew we were coming out with them, we got crazy excited to devour their famous chicken wings.
Anyone remember how I was mostly a vegetarian before the trail? Yeah… not out here. We ordered thirty six breaded wings with six different sauces and a basket of cheese fries. The restaurant is a BYOB place, hence our earlier stop. We devoured the wings, some were far hotter than others. Our stomachs went from being empty to beyond capacity. Warthog told me long after we got back to the house that he still felt sick from eating too much food. But I bet if you asked if he’d do it all over again, he wouldn’t hesitate.
More rain and storms were coming while we were on the island. We drove down to the south point and watched the waves and lightning from the safety of the car, with thunder booming overhead. It was a beautiful storm to watch. I was glad I was exactly where I was too and not in the middle of the woods for it.
We had hoped to do a few other things on the island, but the weather cancelled those plans. We still got to see the place, eat at Chegg, and get ourselves into the beach mode. I loved it. It felt like a mini vacation. Because of the rain we decided to head back to the house. On the way though, we had to stop by Wawa where we grabbed six donuts because apparently we weren’t full enough. Or maybe we just like to torture ourselves.
-ansel