Travel and Birthday Party!

Terry and I drove into New Jersey yesterday for a surprise birthday party for my sister. She will be turning one of those with a "0" on the end on the 13th of the month. According to her two daughters, Ruthann isn't overly (overtly?) concerned about this happening. After all, it's just a number.

There were about two dozen of us there and she seemed a little surprised that we would make such a big deal out of the whole thing. She was especially surprised, I think, that Terry and I would drive all the way in from PA (about 250 miles) to celebrate with her.

We'll be making a similar trip back in two weeks to help her oldest daughter, Kristen, celebrate her marriage to a real nice guy named Richard. They will tie the knot in a civil ceremony on the 11th but we'll all party on the 19th.

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Terry and I were trying to remember the last time I traveled across the Delaware River and the best we could figure was that it was for Christmas 2010. That's the Christmas when it snowed so hard that Rick and Sandy, in from Portland, Oregon for just three days, ended up staying almost a week because the airports were all shut down. (That might explain why they won't be coming to Christmas this year!)

Terry's been to New Jersey several times since then either to meet with some of her stitching friends or to use her Mom's house as a way station for Newark International Airport so she could fly out west. Together we attempted to attend a wedding in New Jersey in September, but the floods from hurricanes and tropical storms foiled our travel plans.

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No floods this time, but we did stay in a hotel in Parsippany that is still renovating its first floor because of those September floods. We also saw, along the way in on I-80 and back home along Routes 97 and 6 (we wanted a different view) plenty of signs of damage from those floods and the recent snow storm that dropped between one and two feet of white stuff. In fact, we had to wait for the power to come on at the BP gas station in Montague, NJ so we could fill the Jeeps tank on our way home. There were lots of electrical and tree crews out and about in Sussex County, NJ and in the Poconos trying to clean up and restore power nearly a week after the storm struck.

At least this time we had two beautiful days to make the long drive to and fro.