Finishing the Loop #8 – Pennsylvania to New Jersey

Monday 6^th May – Philadelphia

 Although we have finished the Loop from a boating perspective, we still have to reach New York Harbour to have completed it entirely. Which means we won’t have done it until we reach Jersey City, New Jersey in a couple of days. On our Loop trip, we would have crossed from Baltimore to Philly via the Chesapeake Delaware Canal, to reach Delaware Bay – hence our rip to Philadelphia by car.

This began with the route march to the Hertz agency in the Baltimore Hilton from our repositioned berth, then Hertz proceeded to rip me for $55 by way of billing me for an “upgrade” that I didn’t request, they didn’t tell me about, and I didn’t get anyway! I didn’t pick it up at the time, but I will be having words with them when I drop off the car at Dulles airport next week.

We set Carmen to avoid toll roads, which led to a scenic  tour up Highway one over the Conowingo dam on Susquehanna river. We arrived in the early afternoon, but Carolyn was too sick with the cold she picked up in the last few days to go anywhere.  So we didn’t get to visit the Liberty Bell museum. – just went to an ACME (truly) supermarket for fixins for dinner in our motel room and had an early night.

Tuesday 7^th May – Atlantic City NJ

Departed early at 8am for the 1hr drive to the old Silverton factory site in Millville, NJ, where Loopy Kiwi was built. While it is still there, there is not a lot to show what it once was, but I took a few pix for nostalgic reasons anyway.

We continued on to  Cape May at the mouth of the Delaware Bay and visited the lighthouse there.

 This end of Cape May is subject to major coastal erosion, and great chunks of the township have been washed away over the years the pic below shows a photo that was taken in 1944. The town trolley tracks that used to run up to 1918 would now be 1/4 mile offshore, and the shoreline has moved even further inland since the photo was taken. The WW2 bunker below, now on the beach, was originally 900ft inland.

The ICW cuts across the peninsular with a canal and then continues up the Atlantic coast.. The city of Cape May is mile after mile of Hotels, motels, condos, restaurants and theme parks – all deserted and closed, so it was like driving through a ghost town. However, we noticed that their “season” opens on 10^th May, so I think it will be a very different story after this weekend.

We followed the ICW up to Atlantic City, where we had booked into Balleys Casino. However, registration didn’t start till 4pm (unless you pay a $10 early check-in fee) so we took a walk to the nearby Tanger market so Carolyn could go to Skechers to buy more shoes. Balleys is not only big, it is also physically linked to Caesars Palace and the Wild West Casinos. We decided to partake of Caesars Buffet dinner and had to walk through the Wild West to get to it.. Which, after partaking of the feast of roast turkey and other stuff, meant we had to come back the same way. Carolyn decided to play the “1c” pokies, which are actually 80c pokies as the minimum bet is 80 tokens @ 1c each, so  $20 disappeared in 5 minutes, so we soon flagged that away. It would appear also that I am coming down with Carolyn’s cold…..

Wednesday 8^th May – Jersey City NJ

….Which I was.

So, feeling grotty, we departed Atlantic City and drove inland a little to to Egg Habor Yachts, the company that bought Silverton’s assets when it went belly up in 2013. I took a few pix, then went inside and met VP Sales and Marketing who, after hearing my Silverton story, took me on a factory tour. There were only a few boats under construction and mainly sportfishers with outboard power. One 42 footer was to be fitted with four 425HP Yamaha outboards. They wouldn' allow cameras in their factory, so I asked if I could get a pic of the mold for the Silverton 453 (there had been a few Silverton molds in the factory yard), but he told me it had been scrapped (sigh)..

When we left, Carmen wanted to take us inland, but we forced her back to the coast and up to Jersey City. The .motel was on the side of a cliff, quite reminiscent of houses in Wellington and, although it didn’t face the Hudson River, it was directly opposite Chelsea Pier, where we began our Blount cruise to Chicago last year. So that constituted the end of the Loop. Yet another supermarket dinner as we were both feeling to shitty to go out, which also explains no pix of New Jersey – although there wasn’t anything photogenic about where we were, anyway - unless you like looking at railway yards.

The Great Loop is done!