Sunday's post on EARLY Monday morning!

Wow, did we have a full weekend!!

For several weeks we've been trying to accomplish one of our annual rituals of Spring - visiting the ocean for a day trip and walking the boardwalk before the season officially kicks in on Memorial Day. (We live about 2 1/2 hours from the beach.) We usually try to do this in April but hadn't been able to get there so we decided Saturday was THE day to do it. It was really hazy and foggy when we left home early in the morning. We were headed for Ocean City, New Jersey, a resort town located about a half hour south of Atlantic City.

On our way, we stopped at Cowtown in Woodstown, New Jersey, to shop at the market there. Cowtown is a twice weekly market with stalls featuring everything from underwear to Amish meats to cell phone equipment and garden supplies. Just about all of the merchandise is new, mostly closeouts or knock-off look-a-likes, edible or home grown. There are some bargains to be had if you know what you're getting. We bought some edibles, socks for me, an extra auto plug for my cell, and a few other stray items.

There are always a few things to make you smile when you're wandering through the stalls. Many of the sellers are not fluent in English which often results in some amusing signs. One lingerie stand quoted prices for bras in terms of $$ per "pair". You can imagine some of the comments we discussed with regard to that. We still aren't sure whether one bra constitutes "a pair" or if that was another way of doing a 2 for 1 deal.

I had hoped to have some bright beautiful pictures of the beach for you but the closer we got to the beach the foggier it got. At one point, you could only see about 4 blocks down the boardwalk. I took pics they're just not real bright. Even with the heavy fog and SPF 30, I managed to get a little too much sunburn.

Ocean City is a quaint little town with beautiful residential areas lots of historic buildings and a bustling Main Street type shopping area as well as the traditional boardwalk shops. We arrived in the middle of a Heart Walk on the boards so we took some time to simply sit on a bench and watch the folks go by and enjoy the ocean air. Once the walk was over, there was a band playing and some healthy cooking demonstrations. We enjoyed the band while having a customary frozen custard (probably not real heart healthy), bought a tub of caramel popcorn (again of questionable health value)

and walked through some of my favorite shops. While the boards feature plenty of fast food, junk shops and such, they also have a number of truly interesting , high quality gift shops that actually feature some excellent handcrafted gifts. We also spent a lot of time simply sitting on the benches and watching the waves roll in and inhaling that wonderful combination of sea salt and sand while the sea gulls squawked all around us. It was a fantastic day!!

Today, we didn't risk any more sunburn. We attended a Blues for the Cure concert at a club in Middletown, Delaware. It was held inside and in fairly dim light. I'm sure my skin thanks me for this! There were 6 or 7 bands scheduled but we only stayed for the first three as we were expecting guests at our house this evening. As it turned out, our plans changed and we headed over to the casino for a few hours where we ran into other folks we knew and had a bite to eat with them.

So, that, folks, is why Sunday's post didn't get here until early Monday morning!! I've been really busy!