New York Vacation Day 12 - Liberty Bell, Atlantic City, and Six Flags, New Jersey (and Number 14)

So today was our last morning in New York and while I've had a lot of fun and gotten to see a lot of new things I'm so excited to move onto the third leg of this trip. We hurried and packed our stuff, ate a quick breakfast, and headed out the door by 8.

 

We got lucky with our rental car. We always rent compact cars since we've never needed anything bigger, but the shop didn't have any compact with gas in it as we reserved. They ended up upgraded us to a Kia Soul with little gas in it and said we wouldn't need to fill up before turning it in.  Score! We quickly made our way to a gas station to fill up (we still had a long drive ahead of us) and left the city.

 

Our last shots of the city.
Good bye New York!

 

I had decided a few weeks ago that our drive was only a couple hours, but we had to get our car early and we couldn't check in until 4 so we should stop somewhere on our way there. I really wanted to see the Liberty Bell and Larry really wanted to do Atlantic City. Well last night I was going over timing and our route and decided we had time for both (even though Larry said he would be okay if we only did the Bell, he would just have more fun at the casino. Since he's been so good with letting me call the shots so far on this whole trip I thought he deserved some fun too).

 

The Liberty Bell area was really pretty. The Bell itself was much smaller than I thought it would be, but it was so cool to see it. We didn't have a lot of time at this stop so we didn't walk through Independence Hall, but we got to walk right by it and see through it and everything so I figured it was close enough. In total I think we spent about  an hour in this area so it was enough time. We even got to see an old colonial marching band play in the courtyard area.

 

Liberty Bell

 

Independence Hall

After that we headed over to Atlantic City real quick. I felt like it was Father's Day so I made sure to send the following picture with a little note to my dads letting them know we were thinking of them, but I couldn't post anything on social media because I didn't want anything with our location posted while we were away:

I was then quickly informed Father's Day is next weekend (by the way I should mention I had their gifts delivered earlier in the week...whoops!).

So yes, we did stop at the Taj Mahal (again, you can't go to a place like this and not see a big site like this!). I decided I was hungry and Larry kept saying the buffet would be worth it. The only thing is he didn't realize I wanted to eat right when we got in there so we skipped the buffet (since he wasn't hungry enough to make it worth the money) and just eat some Panda. Then we went down and found a Black Jack table to play on. I lost my betting money real quick (and even some of Larry's). Larry ended up "winning $150 and taking it from Donald Trump" as he wanted me to state it haha. I will say the casino is a lot more like Vegas then Wendover only without smoking (I could still smell it, but there were signs all over saying you couldn't).

Finally we got on the road after a couple of hours there and headed to our hotel. Boy if anyone thinks New Jersey is dirty and gross they should really go see New York! This place is gorgeous! We had to take the long way to our hotel to avoid toll roads, but it was more than worth it. We spotted some deer and other wildlife just sitting on the side of the road (still alive, I promise) and the houses are on huge lots of land with trees everywhere lining the roads.

We drove past a street called Nugent Street (or road? I can't remember) and it had some pretty homes. I would totally live here if need be. The best part is our hotel had some iffy review on TripAdvisor, but it was the best one of all the options. It's so much better though! It's clean and big and so nice! My only issues are it's 10 miles from Six Flags (but still the closest hotel) and we accidentally ordered it with two twin bed so I'm not sure we'll be able to sleep in the same bed tonight...I guess we'll try it out.

I had bought tickets for Six Flags for tonight and the park still had quite a few more hours so we headed over. Unfortunately I accidentally grabbed the ticket for Monday so they couldn't let us in right away. We had to go to Guest Services for them to upgrade them, but that only cost $10 so it wasn't too bad. I could still kick myself for forgetting (luckily the Sunday one will work for Monday without any new fees). I decided we had to hurry and ride the Kingda Ka this first day so that we could get in any row and then tomorrow we could try for the front row. When we got in the line it said it had 90 minutes (the park closed in 3 so I figured it'd be safe, might be our only ride, but we should be good). Three hours later we finally got to ride on it, which means I have officially ridden the World's Tallest Roller Coaster to date!!!! I'm so happy, it's a quick ride, but I loved it! Oh and good news, it didn't make me sick :)

Still waiting in line after 2 hours!

I was right in assuming it would be our only ride, we got in JUST before the park closed so it was super lucky. On our way home we stopped at Longhorn Steakhouse for dinner (because yum and it was close). Once we were done there was this HUGE rainstorm just a coming down...good timing once again. Although I am really worried about the weather tomorrow. You see before we left I was checking the weather a lot and it said it was going to basically rain our whole trip. Well we hadn't seen any rain until today and when I checked a couple days ago today and Monday was super clear with barely a 10% chance of rain so I figured we'd be good. After the storm we got tonight I decided to check online and it says there are going to be scattered thunderstorms tomorrow, which means the park could close down. I'm still going to go just in case, but I really hope we get to ride more rides. It'd be pretty tragic to come all this way and not get to ride anything else (I hope they'll refund my tickets if so though).

Fingers crossed things go better, oh and my brother finally got us pics of our cats so I'm feeling SO much better now and ready to go have some fun tomorrow. Happy weekend ya'll! Our last one on vacation now.