Prior to the oldest grandson's graduation, we took a long weekend to visit the Jersey Shore. It was a perfect - two days on the beach, roasting gently to a golden brown and enjoying our family in their newly restored beach place in Seaside Park, NJ. They were lucky. They had the money to repair and refurnish their cottage. We kept the windows open to enjoy the evening breezes and even had to pull out a blanket or two. 
As we drove and walked around however, there is still much work to be done. We saw huge ocean view homes and small cottages that had been ripped from their foundations and plopped down beside them. "See all the empty spaces?" my daughter explained, "That's where they've cleared all the others away." On the ocean side the peninsula, the houses were not flooded, but many were drowned in sand. On the bay side, they were flooded, taking the fronts right off them. In both cases, some houses survived and some were demolished. "It's as if we had a whole bunch of small tornados cherry picking where to create disaster," said Kathryn as we finished up our disaster tour with the setting of the sun. The boardwalk is being rebuilt. Down where we were the stores were open on refurbished boardwalk planks, but the rides will never return and restoration of the area to provide more beach instead of rides is taking shape. There's only on grand carousel left. So much for Fun Town. Even the pizza seemed a little sad this year.
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