So @dhimmel and I went to the beach.

Our trip didn't start out smoothly. For an unknown reason, I got very sick the day we planned to leave and could barely get up without feeling off balance. Fortunately, after lots of water and sleep and a violent throw up, I felt much less nauseous. Daniel proceeded to drag me out of bed at 9p and started driving to the beach house. I slept the whole way. After a total of 14 hours of sleep, I woke up to Daniel's delicious breakfast of bacon, egg, hash browns and Kurt and Nathaly's incredible French press coffee. Food and coffee healed me immediately. At the beach, after scoping the area, we decided on a spot relatively close to the water (you can see our lovely host Nathaly on the corner):

We spent more than half a day (we started so early the life guards weren't there yet) doing whatever people do at the beach: swimming, jumping, diving, sand digging, playing catch, etc. We even did a bootie workout! At one point, we were going back into the water when Daniel was thrilled to pick up an alive horseshoe crab (in the past, he has found dead ones with only their shells left):

Soon enough, the curious youngsters started to gather around to learn more about this strange living fossil. I documented the interaction on twitter:

Hillary joined us for dinner at sunset, then we took some more photos on which I later applied Google's Modena filter to increase the brightness:

I also attempted to piggyback Daniel, which was challenging in the sand:

At a pretty late hour, we walked barefoot back to the house and got some surprise facial expression from observers who were drinking on their porch. We nodded "yes" to all of their "are you guys just now getting back from the beach" look. At the house, after showers and aftersun spray, we got to enjoy fireworks on the rooftop. Nathaly spoiled me once again with the most scrumptious munchies from GoPuff - much needed after a full day of sun and activities. While munching, I suggested we get up at 5a to watch sunrise at the beach, to which Kurt refused and asserted the importance of 8-hour sleeps (normally I would agree). So it was just us two half asleep walking to the beach the next morning. On the walk, these adorable little kittens (baby rabbits) woke us up:
However, we later realized that we slightly overestimated our acuity because somehow we managed to throw the house key away. It was a tragicomedy. We went back out, searched the pavements and started looking into all the trashcans just to realize a trash collection vehicle beat us to them. Now, why the trashcans you may ask? Well, Daniel likes plastics where they're supposed to be. So that morning after being mesmerized by the sunrise, we walked along the shore to collect trash to throw away. We suspected this was when Daniel accidentally threw the key away, with the other trash. Or perhaps the sand swallowed the key. We were lucky Nathaly still welcomed us inside when we came back empty handed.

Nature: 1 - Human: 0

Nonetheless, we got to witness the serenity of the ocean in the early morning:

and these sea creatures:

When everyone else was heading back to the beach, we decided to take a hike instead due to our severe sunburn from the first day. Daniel's brief research suggested this lake called Blue Hole right in the middle of our drive back to Philly. It looks beautiful from what we gathered on the internet. On the way, we spontaneously stopped at this lovely shop called Mazza's Market and Coffee House that makes the best Italian sandwiches with freshly-cut, basil-sprinkled tomato slices. (The owner literally walked around the counter to pick one of those succulent tomatoes you see in the photo and cut it up for our sandwiches!) I wanted to get everything from the bakery but ended up with only one sticky bun #maxselfcontrol.

As we began our hike, I was a bit worried about the distance and weather condition. We didn't stop much, except for this ant(?):

or, to pick wild blueberries:

or, to reroute from a dead end.

Our destination was not bad, but not as blue as we expected:

We dreaded the long tedious hike back, so we decided to run. On ViewRanger, you can see we averaged at 6.45 mi/h during the last two miles (~ 9:20 min/mi - which is to me quite respectable given we were running on sand with extra weight and only sandals)

Overall, it was an underwhelming hike not in terms of company but sceneries and destination expectation. Also on this hike, Daniel concluded that NJ is basically a gigantic beach. When I mentioned this to Kurt, he corrected me that the areas we walked through were called pine barrens. Same difference.

Now, are you ready for the punchline?
Turns out, there are two Blue Hole's on Google that are 1.7 miles apart, and we went to the wrong Blue Hole.

Here is our track on ViewRanger:

I circled in orange here where we were supposed to go, compared to where we ended up at. One would think two dedicated researchers would do a better job researching this place #facepalm. Our prior of Google being correct was off: if you search "blue hole nj" on Google, you will see
which is completely misleading. The image on the left was not taken from the location on the right. I only found out about this while trying to look for links to write this entry #posteriordistribution. For future reference, if you want to visit this place, make sure you go to the Blue Hole on Piney Hollow Rd, Hammonton, NJ 08037. Well, nature, we're sorry we judged you wrong.

Once again, tragicomedy.

Nature: 2 - Human: 0

To end this post on a high note, here comes the sun: