Can you guys believe it’s already September?! I opened the door this morning expecting it to be suddenly cool and beautiful out, but alas, summer and its humidity are still here for a few more weeks. If only the pools were still open. 😉
Matt and I had a great weekend saying goodbye (at least unofficially) to summer, though. On Friday night, we met up with a group of friends for a stand up paddleboarding outing at Key Bridge Boathouse!
It was CRAZY crowded and disorganized (there were about 3948203948 people there and apparently like 1 person was working… guess we should have expected that on such a gorgeous holiday weekend night!), so we had to wait forever, but when we finally got out on the water it was totally worth it.
Here’s my friend Kathleen in action:
And Matt, sitting down & enjoying the view.
Blurry action shot of the two of us sitting on our boards enjoying the sunset!
I got these pictures with my waterproof camera that I stored in my SPIbelt, in case you were wondering! 🙂
On Saturday, Matt and I spent the majority of the day working – both of us had a lot to catch up on and with no plans on the agenda, we decided it was a good day to work so that we could play for the rest of the long weekend! With the exception of a yoga class for me and a spur of the moment short bike ride later on in the day with our friend Tom, we basically didn’t move from our living room.
But it was totally worth it, because bright and early on Sunday morning we left for the beach! My college BFF Turner’s family has a house in Cape May, NJ, and they invited us to join them for one last summer hurrah. Didn’t have to ask me twice! 🙂
Sunday was a little cloudy so we spent the day hanging out at the pool.
On Sunday night, we had a delicious feast at the house! We enjoyed:
- Fruit salad
- Chickpea salad (love)
- Kale salad (I’m going to get the recipe and recreate this for the blog – it was amazing)
- Oysters Rockefeller (always a hit – basically oysters cooked with spinach & cheese)
Plus grilled scallop & veggie kabobs (loved this as an alternative to chicken kabobs!), seared pepper tuna, and grilled peaches wrapped in prosciutto (this was AMAZING).
Turner’s family really knows how to do food right. Here was my plate – I ended up going back for seconds of the kale salad, too. We also had some simple sliced tomatoes (a piece of tuna was hiding under mine on the plate – they went well together). Fresh farmers market summer tomatoes are incomparable to normal grocery store tomatoes, don’t you think?
On Sunday, Matt, Turner, her husband Will, and I were all up and out the door for a 6 mile run at 8 a.m.
It’s always fun to run around Cape May, even though the weather was a bit more humid than we would prefer for running. 😉
We ran along the beach wall for part of it and also had fun looking at all the cute houses.
We slightly undershot and ended up back at the house at 5.77 miles. We were talking about finishing it out, but I had been hoping for a bathroom for the last 2 miles of the run, so I was ready to call it quits. Good enough! 🙂
This was the inaugural run for my new GPS watch (my old garmin watch broke a few weeks ago after 5 years of running, RIP Garmin)! My birthday is in a few weeks, so when my parents heard my old watch was broken, they offered to get me a new watch for my birthday. Very nice of them! 🙂 After much debate, research (the DC Rainmaker blog is amazing for GPS watch reviews – thanks to you guys for recommending I check out his site!), and recommendations from you guys, I ended up getting the Garmin Forerunner 910xt.
I basically wanted something similar to my old watch in function (I had the Garmin Forerunner 305, which is now discontinued since it’s an old model), but slightly smaller. So far, I really like the 910xt – it’s an amazing watch and you can even swim with it (I took it for a spin in the pool last week right after it arrived!).
I really like that the settings functions are all very similar to my old 305 watch, and that it has the option to have 4 different stats showing at once on the screen. There was basically no learning curve to figuring out how it all worked since it’s like my old watch, which was great. The only thing I don’t love so far is that it’s pretty bulky. It’s not quite as large as my old watch (the 305 was massive), but I find the wrist strap less comfortable – it’s just made for a man’s wrist. I really wish Garmin would make female versions of their fancier watches. Do any of you guys who have this watch know if you can put another smaller wristband on it or anything? Any tips?
Anyway! After our run and a simple breakfast at the house, we headed to the beach for the rest of the day!
For lunch, the choice was obvious: Hot Dog Tommy’s. This is the greatest place ever and I look forward to it every summer! You can’t visit Cape May without going to Hot Dog Tommy’s. 🙂
Hot Dog Tommy’s is just a stand on one of the side streets, and Tommy serves up awesome hot dogs while wearing a big hot dog hat. So great.
I had two hot dogs (the small size dogs). Delicious!
- Sweet relish, yellow mustard, ketchup, banana peppers
- Sauerkraut, a dill pickle, yellow mustard
After enjoying the beach for a few more hours (it was gray in the morning but turned into a beautiful afternoon!), we all went out to dinner at my absolute favorite spot in Cape May: the Cape May Point Red Store.
It’s a general store with all sorts of cool healthy products, and is also an amazing restaurant with a cute cozy inside and a beautiful back patio, too. I’ve only been here once before so when I heard that it was the plan, we decided it would be worth arriving home to DC super late in favor of not missing out on dinner. 🙂
At dinner was me and Matt, Turner (whose real name is Laura – Turner is her maiden last name/college nickname), her parents, and her brother Steve & his girlfriend Stephanie. The only one missing was Turner’s husband Will who had to head back early. Turner’s family is awesome and I always love getting to spend time with them. We had a great time at dinner (and the whole weekend)!
The restaurant is BYO and we enjoyed this wine – I took a photo so we’d remember it because it was REALLY good!
As for dinner, the menu is all small plates, so we got a lot of stuff to share.
Clockwise from top left: an amuse bouche salad, loaded oysters, baked egg with lobster & grilled bread, a Thai-style ceviche. YUM!
For my main dish (which was still a small plate), I had the steak. Aren’t the tomatoes on the side pretty? The green one looked like a little mini watermelon!
What a wonderful way to end such a fun trip. Thanks again to the Turners for having us! 🙂
Matt and I got back to DC late last night and now it’s back to work – I have a bunch of AnneTheRD client calls today and a mountain of emails/to do list items to get to! I hope you’re all having a nice start to this short week!
p.s. Thank you to everyone who entered my giveaway to run the National Press Club 5k with me on Saturday! The winner is Logan – congratulations and looking forward to meeting you later this week! 🙂
