The main draw for me (Kate) to Mystic, CT was the 1988 film Mystic Pizza . Not gonna lie, I’m a big fan of this movie! So when we decided to come up to New England this year, Mystic had to be on the route! The movie Mystic Pizza was inspired by a vacation that Amy Jones (screenwriter) had in this town. We took an evening to enjoy “a slice of heaven” and take in the beautiful town. We walked the main road in downtown, over the drawbridge, and stopped at the Mystic River Park. This park was super active with lots of visitors and even live music. After our walk, we stopped for ice cream at Drawbridge Ice Cream and enjoyed our dessert while people watching.

Today’s travel day was particularly long for us clocking in about 345 miles and 9 hours of travel. We left Cape May, NJ around 10am (which is about an hour early for us) and arrived at Mystic, CT close to 7pm. Based on several conversations with big RV owners who travel in the northeast, we decided to go about 40 miles out of the way to skirt further outside of New York City traffic. We only hit backups trying to leave the Jersey Shore and had a fairly smooth travel day, but all 5 of us are exhausted. I’m glad this part of our travel this year is behind us! Our next really long travel day is in September as we head south, but we still have a couple 250 mile days between now and then.

Long travel days are not great for this one… we have started giving her calming treats to help her relax a bit. Her normal fireworks dose might be a smidge too much though…

With a day shortened by packing and preparing to leave this beautiful location, we decided to make a quick trip to the west coast of New Jersey. We went to North Cape May and saw where the Lewes-Cape May ferry docks, then drove up the coast to find an afternoon snack. We stopped at Fleck’s in Villas, NJ. Fleck’s is a baseball themed, family run ice cream parlor. What an awesome find! The ice cream was delicious and the service was fantastic! We definitely recommend a stop here if you are in the area!

Cape May started as a small fishing village, centered around the whaling industry. But by the mid 1700’s, it had established itself as the premier vacation spot for prominent families in the northeastern United States. Over the past 2 centuries, it has had to rebuild itself a couple times due to fire and such. Much of the current construction was completed in the late 1800s showcasing a beautiful mix of Victorian styles - Gothic Revival, Queen Anne, and American bracketed style buildings can be seen throughout the island. While in Cape May, we spent a couple hours tooling around and looking at all the beautiful homes - many of them are vacation rentals.

This morning we drove over to Cape May Point State Park . We saw the Cape May lighthouse, explored through the ecological exhibits at the park and visited the beach. On this beach is an abandoned bunker from WWII, Battery 223 of Fort Miles . It was built as part of a set of batteries - connected to Cape Henlopen on the other side of the bay opening into the Atlantic Ocean - to protect Delaware Bay from intruding forces.

This was our first time going to the Jersey Shore. We chose Wildwoods since it’s closest to where we’re staying but still a similar effect of the boardwalk, shops, etc. We are here as the season is ramping up, so it was decently busy during the week. We were a bit surprised about how far the ocean is from this particular boardwalk (it felt like 1/2 a mile!), but we still ventured out to it!

Our travel day to NJ was fairly uneventful, but we made a last minute decision that may have made it a longer travel day! We had been planning to take the Lewes-Cape May ferry from DE to NJ since our next stop is Cape May. After seeing the traffic and ferry and having spoken with a few friends about taking an RV across on the ferry, we decided we would drive rather than take the ferry. Whlie we would be encouraged to explore the ferry and watch the water go by, we didn’t like that we would have to leave the dogs in the truck (with no way to keep an eye on them) while exploring the ferry. So, we’ve put it on our list for another time.

Wishing you a safe day celebrating 250 years of American Independence!