Delaware

Welcome Sign.  Picture Taken By Me.

I find Delaware to be much like myself – half Yankee and half Southern.  My mom’s family is from New Jersey and my dad’s family is from southeast Virginia.  That also means, I drove through Delaware A LOT growing up.  I thought there was NOTHING there.  I was 25 before I actually stopped and spent any time in Delaware when I went to Rehoboth Beach (http://www.beach-fun.com/ for more info on Rehoboth Beach) for a long weekend retreat with my church’s young adult group.  It was a lot of fun and the boardwalk in Rehoboth reminded me of the Jersey Shore’s boardwalks that I grew up on so I was at home.  A coworker of mine suggested Thrasher’s Fries on the boardwalk and they were SO YUMMY!!  http://thrashersfrenchfries.com/.  If you’re there, you’ve got to find them.

Rehobath Beach.  Picture taken by my friend, Lori, a few years ago.

If you’ve never traveled in the Mid-Atlantic area of Maryland/Delaware/New Jersey, here are a few things you need to know before you come.  First, there are A LOT of tolls in this area and if you’re paying cash, you’ll be in lines.  If you plan to come to this area often, I’d suggest you get an EZ Pass because those lines are much faster - http://ezpassmd.com/en/home/index.shtml.  An EZ Pass is a box you stick on your windshield.  When passing a toll machine, it scans the box, and it electronically pays the toll with the bank account / credit card number that you gave them when registering.  Most of the time, you can go up to 50 mph through EZ Pass lines.  Secondly, stop at the Delaware House if you’re traveling I-95.  It’s a great, clean, and well-light rest area with restaurants, restrooms, a convenience store, and a gas station.  Third, if you want to drive from southeast Virginia to New Jersey, skip trying to go up I-95 and through DC (District of Columbia) and Baltimore – that’s crazy!  Take the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel (http://www.cbbt.com/) to the “Eastern Shore,” which is the peninsula with Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware on it.  Then, drive to Cape Lewes and catch the Cape May – Lewes Ferry http://cmlf.com/.  It’s a fun 85 minute cruise/ferry trip from Cape Lewes, Delaware to Cape May, New Jersey.  I took it a couple of times growing up.

If you want to do some major shopping, keep in mind that Delaware is a tax-free shopping state!!

This past Thanksgiving, my parents watched possibly their favorite “sport” – “PUNKIN CHUNKIN.”  That’s not misspelled and it’s exactly what it sounds like – they hurl pumpkins, and not just little kids tossing them across the yard, but grown men catapulting them the distance of a football field!  Well, the WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP of PUNKIN CHUNKIN that we watched last year is in Bridgeville in early November every year - http://www.punkinchunkin.com/.  It might be an interesting road trip.  While researching Bridgeville, I found they are the home of RAPA Scrapple Company.  What is scrapple?  Let’s call it a “meat product” and leave it at that.  It tastes good so just eat it and not ask what’s in it.  The town is pretty proud of them.  They even have an Apple Scrapple Festival in the fall - http://www.applescrapple.com/!

Lastly, I love lighthouses, and Delaware has a lot of them to visit.  A website that I love to do research on that I didn’t include in my “show my hand” post is http://www.lighthousefriends.com/.  It has all the lighthouses in the United States by state.

These are just a few of the things you need to know and a few of the places I want to go visit in Delaware.  If you know of anywhere else in Delaware we should check out, please leave a comment below.  See you next week when we explore what’s just round the corner in Florida.