“Remoted” – Day 221 (Friday)

Friday was a vacation day scheduled to spend time with Mom on her birthday. My sister and middle niece were also available and it became a girls’ adventure day.  

There was some hilarity. My sister was driving Mom’s car and I was navigating, which was our first mistake, as I'm lucky if I can find my way in my own house. The first question to me was “How do we get to the beach from your house?” which is a perfectly reasonable question, but I didn’t know the answer. Even using Waze I got us stuck in the wrong lane approaching a construction zone and we missed an exit. We laughed as we drove by the same road construction crew, police officer, and the Rockingham Mall three times. We wondered if we would ever get out of Salem, New Hampshire and arrive in Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts.

Salisbury Beach.

At Salisbury, the water was grayish, the sky was gray, the air was cool, and my niece, dressed in shorts and a hooded sweatshirt, went into the water and stayed there a lot longer than seemed possible. Further down the beach, a man in shorts was swimming. It was chilly near the water, and the sun was barely perceptible through the clouds. We wandered around Salisbury, then decided to ride to Hampton and check out Brown’s for lunch. Mom took the wheel for this leg, and luckily, she knows how to get from Salisbury to Hampton. I was off the hook on the navigation and there were no routing incidences. 

Brown’s had several groups waiting outside the restaurant and we decided to skip it and visit the beach. In the spirit of adventure, we took on the challenge of finding a free parking spot. This had us cruising up and down almost every one of the letter-named side streets. What looked like an open spot from Ocean Boulevard turned out to be occupied by a motorcycle, marked by a “Resident Only” sign, was a driveway, or was snatched from our grasp mere seconds earlier by the car ahead of us. Along the way, we concocted fanciful tales of being reported as a suspicious vehicle and laughed over the mileage being logged in the search for a free parking spot.

Pandemic Hampton Beach Birthday.

In the end, the car was parked on Ocean Boulevard, where the next challenge was the pay machine, in effect until the 31^st. Not knowing while in the car what the payment options were at the machine, my sister and I armed ourselves with bills and my bank card. The instructions indicated we could enter bills into a slot, which couldn’t be more straightforward, except we couldn’t find the slot. We finally realized the cash slot was securely covered with tape that matched the color of the machine. Thank goodness for the bank card for the $2 win. 

Lunch was at the Sea Ketch. At the host podium, we were asked if we wanted the lunch menu or the appetizer menu. Not knowing what was on either menu, we had a hard time answering. Apparently, the lunch menu is served on one level, and the appetizer menu on another level, so it wasn't possible to have both menus. The better first line of inquiry might have been  to ask if we had been there before, and then explain the menus when our answer was "no, we have not."

We blindly chose the lunch menu and were seated at an inside table with a view we enjoyed briefly before a party was seated on the porch and blocked it. After lunch we walked the nearly empty boardwalk, then crossed the street to walk on the nearly empty beach side. The sun had managed to appear, at least looking towards Massachusetts. The sky was dark and serious in the other direction.

Getting back home was as comical as the trip to the beach. We missed an exit resulting in a journey through a residential neighborhood as Waze tried to point us in the right direction. We passed an exit for Salem and wondered if we should drive by the mall again for old times' sake, and laughed about our earlier Salem trek when we thought we might never get out of there.

My thoughtful sister had made Strawberry Shortcake, Mom’s favorite dessert. Back at the house, we were all still too full from lunch to have any. Overall, it was a great day filled with laughs. Happy birthday, Mom!