Our last activity in Cape May, New Jersey was a Whale and Dolphin Watching Cruise.

We sailed through the Cape May Canal, a 3.5 mile canal dug by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1942. 

It enabled captains to avoid the German submarines they would have been exposed to if required to go around Cap May point.

Currently, we learned that tourism and fishing are the basis for Cape May’s economy. 

There is also a Coast Guard Training Center at Cape May, training 3000 recruits a year.  It is the only US Coast Guard training center in the US.  Training takes eight weeks.   We learned that many trainees, or those stationed at the base, often return to Cape May when their service is complete.

Coast Guard ships are named after enlisted heroes.

The Lawrence Lawson is named to honor Lawson’s service as a US Lifesaving Service station-keeper in Evanston, Illinois. He led his oar-powered crew into icy, stormy waters and rescued the crew of the steamship Clalumet on Lake Michigan in 1889.

The Angela McShan was named for the first African-American to be appointed an instructor at the Chief Petty Officers’ Academy and later the first to be promoted to Master Chief Petty Officer.  

We came out into the bay and saw bottle nose dolphins. 

We never got any good pictures as they move very quickly. Gray on gray on gray didn’t help either.

We had crew serving as spotters and narrator.  He told us that a female dolphin goes back to her matriarchal pod when expecting.  Dolphin gestation is 12 months.  She also nurses her young for 12 months. 

Dolphins employ cooperative fishing in their pods and each dolphin eats 10-15 lbs. of food per day.

Bottlenose dolphins can be seen near Cape May from April to December because the water temperature is usually 50 degrees or higher. They do not have natural predators but are injured or killed by boat strikes, pollutants and trash. 

Wild dolphins can live for 45-50 years.  Those in captivity live about 5 years.  The Flipper TV series was on for less than three years and went through five dolphins.  

These are the remains of an experimental concrete ship, the S.S. Atlantus.  It is one of 13 concrete ships built in WWI. It has been receding into the bay since it ran aground in 1926.

After exploring the shoreline of the bay, we went out to sea in search of whales.  Unfortunately, and despite the odds, we never saw whales.

We felt badly for those who really wanted to see whales but we have had the good fortune to see them many times. We were perfectly happy with the dolphins.

The next day we departed for Philadelphia and, for at least the second time, had low pressure in one of the tires.  Randy had already filled the tire once or twice and here we were doing it again.

You may remember we were given an “upgrade” to a mini van in Baltimore.  Considering our experience with Enterprise thus far, we were highly skeptical about whether the intake people at the Philadelphia airport would really fix the tire even if we told them about it.

We weren’t happy about it but felt like we needed to just get the tire fixed for two reasons.  First, the car was going to sit in a parking garage for two nights and we didn’t need a flat when we headed to the airport early in the morning.  Second, it was a mini-van likely to be rented by a family with kids on vacation and they didn’t need to deal with a flat tire either.

I called Enterprise and they directed us to a tire repair shop in the general direction of Philadelphia.  We were told that the tire service would be pre-approved by the time we got there.  Except it wasn’t. 

We told the service consultant to just fix the tire, thinking we’d be out the $15 to have it repaired.  Credit to him, he kept pursuing Enterprise approval and got it.   The tire repair just cost us some time.

We took a bit of a detour to go to Atlantic City, New Jersey and visited the boardwalk.  We were there early on a dreary weather day, so there wasn’t much going on.  We saw enough of Atlantic City to think we aren’t likely to go back.

We did spend a little time walking on the beach though, something we’d hardly done on this trip to the eastern seaboard!

We had been paying road tolls here and there and had to pay to cross this bridge.  Apparently you pay this direction (leaving New Jersey into Pennsylvania) but not in reverse.  The joke we heard later in Philadelphia was that you had to pay to leave New Jersey, but not to go into it. That is not a friendly neighbor perspective, and we certainly don’t have a broad view of New Jersey, but Cape May was delightful!

We arrived in rainy Philly and made it to our Bed and Breakfast Inn, The Thomas Bond House.

Thomas Bond, 1712-1784, was born in Maryland.  He trained as a physician and surgeon in Europe.  He worked in Philadelphia and contributed greatly to medical science in early America.  He, with his friend, Benjamin Franklin, founded the Pennsylvania Hospital in 1751, the first public hospital in the United States.  He was on the first Board of Trustees for the College of Philadelphia, now the University of Pennsylvania.

The house was built in 1769 by Dr. Bond and additions were made in 1824 and 1840. 

The house served as a residence until 1810 and then as a stocking factory, leather tannery, leather goods manufacturer, rag supplier, customs broker and retail shop.

It was restored as a Bed & Breakfast in 1988. 

Our second floor room was very, very nice.

We set off to find Philly Cheesesteaks.  I got mine “wit-wiz” with beef, grilled onions and cheese wiz.  

Randy had his loaded with provolone, peppers, onions and mushrooms.  We both liked mine better.

Our next activity was the Phillies baseball game. When I had tried to buy tickets on my baseball app for the Phillies vs Nationals baseball game, I could not get the purchase to go through – over and over.  Eventually I figured out the problem was that “select games are available only to those with addresses in the Tri-State area of PA, DE and NJ.”  That was surprising considering there were still tickets available and it was the day of the game.  I had to buy our tickets from Ticketmaster, a re-seller.  They did not care that we weren’t from the tri-state area.

We got directions on how to use the subway system to the game.  That required a ten minute walk to get on the blue line going west and then changing lines at the city hall station to get on the orange line going south to the sports complex where the Phillies, Flyers, 76ers and Eagles all play.  It was another ten minute walk to get to Citizen’s Bank Park.

We found that our seats were open to the rain so we moved several times in covered areas until people came to claim their seats. Eventually, the stadium filled up so we went to our own seats.  By then the rain was a mere mist and not a problem.

There were military parachute jumpers entering the stadium as game preparations  continued.

We were entertained by the original mascot, the Philly Phanatic. The Phanatic was portrayed from 1978 to 1993 by David Drummond.  From 1993 to present (2024) the Philly  Phanatic has been portrayed by Tom Burgoyne.  That is two people in 46 years!

The other thing we noticed at the game was one of the most enthusiastic waves around the stadium we have ever seen.  When stadium crowds around the country are getting annoyed with the wave, it was interesting to see Phillies fans embrace it so completely.  Hey, it was a good time to be a Phillies fan. At the time of our visit, they had the best record in baseball.

It was a great game and the Phillies ended up winning in extra innings which made the home crowd happy.  We didn’t really care, but our reversed subway ride was jovial.

Our ten minute walk from the subway stop to our B&B felt a little dicey after dark.  There were lots of people around so it didn’t feel overtly dangerous, just not comfortable.

We had a good night’s sleep and were ready for Philly Day 2

We were in Philly in May 2024.