Avalon NJ 2014

For the second year in a row, we have spent part of a week at the Windrift Hotel in Avalon. Also once again, the kids have pronounced it "excellent", and have asked that we do more beach time in the future. I guess it is hard to say no to that.

We left Tuesday morning, drove through overcast and showers, and got there in time to spend some time at the pool in the afternoon, check out the beach, and get settled. Like last year, Amp's sister and her family are meeting us at the hotel and staying in a room across the hall. It's nice to spend time with family, and the kids get to spend time with their cousins at the pool and on the beach, which is good.

We love the Windrift. The rooms have been renovated fairly recently, and are pretty nice. The location is perfect - on the beach at 80th street, straddling the border between Avalon (to the north) and Stone Harbor (to the south). There is a nice pool with waitress service for food and drinks (gotta love that!), and it's right on the beach. So you can spend beach time in the morning or afternoon, and then head poolside for lunch or an afternoon snack. And a glass of wine. Or two. It is vacation after all...

Windrift Pool

The forecast wasn't very good for the first couple of days, but we ended up making out pretty well. It rained hard Tuesday night while we were having dinner at the restaurant in the hotel, and the rain continued into the morning, but by late morning on Wednesday we were on the beach enjoying the sunny if cool day.

The days went quickly, with beach, pool, eating, drinking, a Wildwood boardwalk side trip (complete with new fancy hair wrap for Grace at the same tattoo parlor she got it done at last year), and the usual terribly-played mini golf outing. None of us will be showing up on the professional golf tour any time soon.

Mini golf

Salt water taffy. The pancake place. Running into a few different friends while there. It was a very nice few days.

Last years' shore time was three days as a test run. This years' was four days. Knowing how much the kids like it, we'll shoot for a week(ish) next year. We made this years' reservations well in advance, and although I tried to extend us (on either end of the four days), there was no availability. We had intended to leave later on Friday and drive home, but the kids were having so much fun together that we decided to all head to our inlaws house in north Jersey and continue the vacation there through the end of the weekend. That went well too...