It was a tearful departure from Sutton Avenue as we left on the second leg of this trip. We almost made it all the way to I-91 before Ruth sent  text that we needed to return and get my CPAP. We pulled over and discussed this and decided it would be a good thing to do since I don’t sleep well without it. Neither does Diane because I snore. When I’m wearing it I can’t hear Diane snore so it’s a win-win. We went back and had another tearful parting. But we got to see Ruth one more time.

We jumped on I-91 to New Haven then transitioned to the I-95 to New York then crossed the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey.

Getting across the Geo. Washington Bridge is a long involved process that begins about 10 miles before there’s any evidence of a bridge. The traffic just creeps along, except for those who find it necessary to jog back and forth in the lanes (like 10 of them) which is a large factor in the slow traffic. But, we finally made it over and the traffic magically sped up for the remainder of our trip.

By sped up, I mean the posted limit was 55 to start but everyone was going 70. There were others going much faster but we always seemed to catch them at the next toll booth. Yup. There’s lots of toll booths on this side. Thankfully, we have an E-ZPass unit that we obtained in Massachusetts on our trip in 2010. It’s a gizmo that’s tied to a credit card that is scanned at each toll booth. It resides on sticky strips inside the windshield so all Diane had to do was zip on through the E-ZPass lane and keep on going. Worked great, except for the first one we encountered. The speed limit through the gate was 15 but she was a little north of 20 so the  digital sign that should have said “E-ZPass Accepted” came up with “Toll Unpaid”. I figure we’ll have a New Jersey State Cop tapping on our door before this part of the trip is over. The remainder of the many toll booths went by without incident. Some of the toll areas don’t require drivers to transit through a booth. They can just fly by at the speed of sound, like some do, and the high-speed readers seem to keep up.

We arrived at our destination 1550, checked into our room, and let Ken & George know we had arrived. Ken ticked off our names on his spreadsheet, gave me a new T-shirt and hat, took our pictures, then turned us loose. I reconnected with old shipmates I haven’t seen in a few years then we had to feed Diane because all she had to this point of the day was one banana and a yogurt.

At 1700 we retired to the on-site 5-star restaurant and had a glorious meal. I had Shrimp Scampi on Angel Hair pasta and Diane had Atlantic Salmon. Both were excellent.

That little yellow thing tied up with the green ribbon is half a lemon. Nifty touch.

Then we checked the DD-808 Conference Room to verify tomorrow’s itinerary to ensure we wouldn’t miss anything we’ve paid for. Looks like we’re catching a bus at 0800 for a trip to a USS New Jersey tour. There’s an aquarium involved with the bus trip, too.

Once we found out when we had to get up, we went back to our room to unpack for the stay, and enjoy the view.

So, from us to you, have a great night.

I just noticed when looking at that last photo that I have hair on top of my head. I thought it was all gone because I can’t see it in a mirror. Maybe it just grew back on the way down here.

Hmmmmm.