The southern part of New Jersey along the Atlantic was surprisingly scenic, though the bigger ocean-side towns all shared the same tacky-store problem that had bothered me in Virginia Beach. We had lunch on the coast and got to spend a little time people-watching on the boardwalk. Around 4pm we gave up on the crowded road and its occasional view and moved over to the parkway to try to make some time. A couple hours later, we were on Staten Island and navigated quite successfully through the evening traffic to meet Harris in Queens (another friend from IRC).
We enjoyed several hours of catching up, dinner, and moving pixels with Harris and Becky before deciding quite late that we really needed to get on the road. We were headed to Port Jefferson, not really that far away, but of course the LIE had a few detour/lane-change/etc. challenges for me and by the time we got off the LIE and headed north I was feeling pretty exhausted. My dad had offered his empty house to us for the night so that we wouldn’t have to drive all the way out to Greenport or find a hotel. We made it to town alright but unfortunately it took many u-turns to find our way to the neighborhood with overgrown curving streets, no street lights, and tiny street signs. We finally found the house and I wanted to weep with joy but I was just too tired!