Sunday 23rd October – Atlantic City

I had an amazing sleep…… I think I won that one! Simon… not so much.  But we had set an early alarm to ensure we arrived in Atlantic City nice and early to beat the traffic.  It was our first attempt at going into a City and finding somewhere to park… on a weekend.  It seemed that the on-street parking was all metered (and expensive) or illegal so we started looking for car parking, eventually haggling with an attendant who agreed we could park Harvey for $20 for the day.  Having checked out the meter charges this seemed quite reasonable so we went for it with the reassurance that there was someone keeping an eye on the RV.

Then we went for a walk, going between the Casinos and shopping malls to reach the seafront.  It was a beautiful blue-sky day and there was a great atmosphere along the Boardwalk because there were a load of crazy people running a marathon and some not-so-crazy people running a half-marathon.

View down the boardwalk

Random statue of a girl running away from an assault of some kind

The other important thing we had to take into consideration was that it was the F1 Grand Prix in Austin today.  Particularly painful for Simon, as the original plan was that once we had our RV we were going to hot-foot it straight down to Texas so that we could be there in person.   Understandably, this idea had to be shelved once we knew that we would never be able to make those time constraints – if we’d set off having collected the RV on 19^th and driven solidly down to Texas for 8 hours plus a day, maybe we could’ve made it – but at what cost?  We would’ve missed so much and have been exhausted.  So, I promised Simon we would strive to find a bar which was showing the race today.  As soon as we hit the Boardwalk we struck lucky with a sports bar with multi-screens.  The lady working there promised we could find the appropriate channel on our return.  We walked miles along the Boardwalk and back, taking in the golden sandy beach, casinos, shops and hotels and even a moving memorial to those who lost their lives from the area, fighting in the Korean War.

We headed back to the sports bar but, a different female member of staff present tried all the many channels in front of us with no sign of any racing.  The bar had filled up with different groups, all watching different American football matches that were on that day, nothing else.  Well, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!  We ended our visit with a couple of beers and some snacks whilst absorbing the atmosphere in the bar and adjoining casino.  Can’t say we started to make sense of the rules of American Football… we’ll see how that goes. 

We had received an excellent present from David’s parents in Boston…. A US Atlas.  Having initially thought we could cope with just the SatNav, this has been irreplaceable.  Even more so for the section at the front entitled ‘Break-worthy roadside attractions’ which contains two extraordinary spectacles per state.  I’ll give you an example.  Lucy the elephant is a three-storey house just South of Atlantic City.  Now open as a museum and point of interest, of course it was worth a slight detour to get some pics and to see the beautiful beach where she lives!

This picture gives you an idea of the scale

Look - she's got windows!

From there it was a short drive to our first Good Sam Park ($44 per night) just South of Philadelphia where the owner gave us a very helpful tip about park and ride facilities with RV parking that would assist us in getting into the city the next day.