Monday, July 29. Day 24

Today we decided to be like tourists and go see Carlos Bakery of Cake Boss fame in Hoboken, NJ. One time when Phil was visiting his daughter, Victoria for a couple weeks, I had my own Cake Boss viewing marathon. Last trip down, I didn’t think of going, so this time I wanted to make sure I went to see Carlos Bakery and even though Phil wasn’t interested, nice guy that he is, he agreed to come along with me.

We started out leaving Nyack Boat Club at 815am driven by Judy to the Pearl River train station. We bought our ticket at the kiosk and then realized that the train wasn’t running due to work on the train tracks on weekdays and weekends so we needed to go to another location to catch a bus to bypass the work zone. I don’t know why, but we had a hard time figuring out where we needed to go, so after a call to NJ Transit, we were on our way. Good thing that it was only 1/4 mile away, as we had 10 min to get there but made it no problem. I had brought my iPad and it really came in handy using the map function to find out where W. Washington and S. Pearl St were.

An interesting note: When we got to what we thought was the bus stop, there was a man who looked to be in his 20’s with headphones on. I asked him if this was the right place to get the bus, and after a couple times, he said yes and then walked about 20ft away to stand under a different tree. Then we we got off the bus at the Causacus train station. There was a ticket agent who took us to the train platform to wait for the train so we sat on a bench close to what turned out to be the same young man, and once again he moved. Weird. Oh we’ll. We HAD a shower last night. 🙂

The train trip took 10 min, and we got off at the end of train tracks by Lakawana Ferry Terminal.
This is an Aerial view of where we visited. “A” is where we were when getting directions and “B” is where Carlos Bakery is.

We went to Carlos Bakery, waited and was out in 1hr 45 min which I thought wasn’t too bad. I had heard of some people waiting 4 hours. Phil was great! They have a system where you start in front of CVS Pharmacy across the street, then someone from the bakery talks with the crowd and hands out numbers. Then eventually you cross the street, where is a small line in front of the bakery and most people are taking photos in front of the bakery. There you wait until you go inside the store looking at their products and photos on the wall until your number is called. I was disappointed that there weren’t any of his sisters working at the counter today.
Me in front of the bakery

These are inside the bakery.

. This last makes it look as of the counter is curved, but it’s straight.

We got a cannoli, brownie and Phil’s pecan Danish .

We also got a mini dark chocolate mouse cake and Taramisu cake to have later. I wished that I had opened the box to take a photo, because when we opened the box later, it had melted from being outside and in the car when shopping. It tasted good, but looked bad at that point.

Being a very warm day, there were people standing in the fountain to cool off.

While walking on the Pier Park, we saw a man throwing traps out to catch crab. He had several lines with a square mesh cage ar the end and would throw one cage in and move down the line to repeat.

These were the crabs that he had caught so far.

We walked back to the train station and caught the train, which would take us to the station to catch the bus home. But this time, we had many stops along the way.

Some of the train stations are very cute. I was tired, so most of the trip to Pearl River was spent napping.

Steve picked us up at the bus stop and then took us grocery shopping. The first stop was at Rockland Bakery.

. It was so cool being able to go back into the factory and picking out the fresh loaves of bread on the cooling racks. You can even pick up the bagels as they are coming off the machine!

. This is the best thing we’ve seen on the trip!! We got some rolls, 12 grain bread for Lorraine and Phil got sourdough bread for <$7.00. Can’t beat it for the quality. Then we went to Shop Rite to get the rest of our groceries. We always get more than we expect to when we go in but it was good to get some fresh meat, dairy and fruit and veggies.

When we got back, Steve and Phil loaded the groceries on the “tin boat” the boat club has for their members to use. I rode along with Steve while Phill took the dinghy back to Changes.

With all that we had done today, I was glad that we could have the leftover pork enchiladas, beans & rice, with the rolls, of course for supper. They were a mess to clean up for Phil though.

Steve and Judy joined us after their yoga class on the pier for cheese and olive baguette and then the mini cakes from Carlos Bakery. They were very good sports about it being cruisers and full-time live aboards themselves.

Now to talk about how Nyack Boat Cub fared with Hurricane Sandy. They did suffer damage, though the water didn’t get close to the club house. The back patio was ripped off.

. They are in the process of replacing that. The storm surge went up near the top of the lower stairs. Their pier survived, but the railing was ripped off by docks and boat, I think, that crashed into it. They did have some boats damaged, and now the mooring committee has made changes to their mooring system. Now they have to have 600# upside down pyramids. They found that with the mushroom mooring, the boats swung around enough to wrap up the mooring and drag. The moorings are further apart now also. As you can see, the picnic area is beautiful.

The new railings on the piers looks great too.

When we left in the morning for our sight seeing, they were digging the lower parking lot and when we returned, that same area had on new asphalt.

Here is a photo of Batana when a cloud went over this morning.

The day ended with a nice sunset.