Cape May(be)

It's Not Easy Being Slow

The Devil's In the Details

Now, when we say "It's not easy being slow" we are not talking about speed. We are talking about two very important qualities we both have: decision making slowness and financial slowness. In persistent attempts to save money we came upon a familiar dilemma: you can't have your cake and eat it too.

We came into Cape May thinking it would be a piece of cake to anchor (or so the Waterway guide said). Possible anchorages were on either side of the Coast Guard station. "How about here?" "Well, here it's too shallow." [Doh! -Ed.] "Well, how about here?" "We're going to bump into that boat!" [Doh! -Ed.] "Ok, fine, how about here?" "There's no place for the dinghy to dock and we'll be stuck on the boat!" [Doh! -Ed.]...this went on for two and a half hours until we intelligently decided we best go to a marina.

Utsch's Marina was there for us. Taking up two pages in our guide the marina claimed to have some of the best newest facilities ever! So, yes, we did have to pay to stay the night. But it wasn't so bad. It was relatively close to the town center and it had a laundromat. We slid in, with some more great maneuvering by Tim, and got ready to go out on the town.

Cape May is a funny little town trapped in between the Jersey Shore and the Delaware Bay. In the summer it apparently gets a huge turnout for it's fine beaches and cute inns from the 1800s. As a matter of fact, every cute house we saw seemed to be an inn. As far as residential neighborhoods, it is unclear where most people really live and what they are like since we were strolling around the touristy streets.

Washington Square was nice, bigger than we expected, with open shops and no cars. We bought some bread and almost bought some fudge. There were fudge shops galore! There was a Jazz Festival taking place in Cape May so along the beach there were people collecting to see the performances. We went to the grocery store and turned back to make the 2 mile walk back to the boat.

It was laundry time. We filled all bags and hands and shuffled over to the best newest facilities ever! There were three commercial sized machines waiting for our home-from-college sized laundry loads. However, there was no change machine. Hello? Um, people need quarters to feed the hungry machines or else no laundry will be done. After walking back to the boat for more rummaging we found enough moola and returned to our clothes.

After a late dinner we fell asleep wondering whether or not we liked Cape May. Although our experience there was full of trials we acknowledge it's tree lined victorian studded streets, it's active downtown and complimentary fudge samples. We give it three propellers.