Last stop: Montauk!

Thomas, Morgan, and ourselves made it out to Montauk on one of the last fine weekends of the fall. We boarded a train at Penn Station to Ronkonkonkonkoma where we picked up Morgan's sister's sweet wheels and drove out as far east as we could before plunging into the Atlantic. We arrived at The Sail Inn of Montauk, a great motel that you should visit if in town. The motel bar/restaurant is a charming place where you can enjoy $1.50 - 3.00 beers (are we in Red Deer?!) and has no intention of observing the smoking ban that's been facetiously posted on the wall.

After driving out in the rain the night before, we were blessed with sun and blue skies the following day. The beaches are gorgeous in Montauk, long and misty, straight out of a Long Island postcard. They were only sprinkled with a few visitors at this time of year.

We went up to the lighthouse where the ticket sales agent said to the patrons ahead of us that "you can only get a discount on your ticket if you're, retired or retarded or somethin" in her finest LI accent. After enjoying the view from the top and gettin our learn on about the lighthouse's history and how the Euros tricked the Montaukett aboriginals into giving up their land, we spent some time envying the surfers shralpin the point break at the bottom of the cliffs.

What's a weekend getaway without some conspiracy theorizing? We went out to the site of the alleged Montauk Project, an old abandoned military base where subjects were supposedly, um, subjected to psychological testing in hopes of developing a psychological war weapon. We even met a local named Mike that proclaimed, "I was shrunk by the Montauk Project!". Aside from making a great tee shirt, we didn't think much of what he said. After going through the chain link fence that prohibited us from going through it:


we walked through some tick infested brush to get to the decommissioned radar tower that admittedly did have an eerie air about it. The nearby 1800s schoolhouse type structures were also creepy with their cemented doors and windows. There was a car circling the restricted area which got us (maybe just me) a little scared that we were going to be apprehended for our trespassing and become those military subjects I mentioned earlier, but then we came to realize it was just a grey haired couple in a Sebring and they were probably just lost.

Then we went to the Lobster Roll for dinner where Thomas showed off his Lobster-eating accoutrements:


The next morning we went to John's pancake house where they claimed to have daily homemade doughnuts that looked neither fresh nor homemade. Breakfast was good though, but then Thomas began to show signs of deterioration. I don't know if it was the radiation from the radar tower or what, but within an hour, Thomas was clinging for dear life and that's when the vacation was over for him. But the rest of us continued to enjoy ourselves and took to the beach for some picnicing and Sunday Times puzzling.

After one last look out to sea, we drove back to Ronkonkoma, dropped off the car and rolled Thomas' cold body onto the train back to reality. What a blissful weekend in Montauk! A big thank you to Morgan for making one of the best weekends of the year happen!