Thanksgiving on the Ocean (in New Jersey)

Over thanksgiving break I had the chance to hang out with Casey, a good friend from back west who just moved to Surf City, NJ. [Here] I drove the 5 1/2 hours from Ithaca Thanksgiving afternoon hoping to avoid traffic, but was only partially successful. (NJ... the state where you have to pay to drive on backed up freeways) Anyhow, we cooked up a big ham dinner with all the fixings that evening. Living on Long Beach Island, (very long and skinny) everyone is pretty close to the ocean, and Casey has a nice little apartment a mere 4 houses from the beach. Thus an after dinner walk was in order, along with a movie and hanging out

The Atlantic ocean at sunset. All these folks back east miss out on sunsets over the ocean...

The next day (Friday) was spent playing Foosball and driving up to the north end of the island to Barnegat lighthouse [Here]. The lighthouse itself is more than 150 years old, and the 2nd tallest in the US. We rock-hopped out to the end of the jetty and I snapped a few pics before retreating from the chilly breeze. That evening we headed over for dinner with a family Casey knew, and ended up playing all sorts of games for the entire evening which was quite enjoyable.

Barnegat Lighthouse, c. 1856

The next day dawned sunny and beautiful and (relatively) warm. Warm enough that we headed out to the beach late morning and ended up building sandcastles. Sure, the water was on the chilly side, but it was still novel to be playing in the sand in shorts and Tshirt when it was almost December. And yes, as a grad student I still make sand castles. Call it a civil engineering practicum. After that we shot hoops, played more foosball, went to the Saturday evening service at his church, and watched another movie. I took off early the next morning to try and beat traffic, but was soundly defeated. It took about 5 hours to get through 2 hours worth of Pennsylvania, with no accidents or anything. Just random slow-downs and hour+ backups for vacant construction sites. Fortunately I picked up a couple friends from Ithaca who had spent the break in NYC on the way home, so at least I had company for the worst of the traffic. Traffic aside though, it was awesome to hang out with Casey again and see his new digs.