RoadsideOnline

Every Father's Day, I like to take my daughter on a train ride. This year I had the bright idea to go to Atlantic City.

Nobody loves the beach more than Roadside Girl.

A happy summer in the Delaware Valley means spending as little time here as possible. Folks in this region consider a summer not spent at least partially on the beach as a summer completely wasted. For teenagers, a shore trip represents a right-of-passage. For families, it means a breezy respite from whatever grind left behind. For little kids, the lights, sounds, and smells of the boardwalk fill out a volume of happy memories to pass along to future generations.

I don't gamble. I have too much respect for money and work too hard to earn it to derive any thrill out of losing it this way.

Vistas along this ride are generally best at the beginning and at the end of the line. Here we see the Betsy Ross Bridge across the Delaware River.

I wondered mainly what Atlantic City had to offer a family seeking to extend a sustainable, car-free lifestyle to the Jersey Shore. We had no intention of visiting any casinos. Of all the beautiful beachfront this country has to offer, I suspect we can access only a tiny percentage of it by train.

Finally recharged, we had a few more items on the agenda: More beach, amusement park for Roadside Girl, dinner at the brew pub for Mr. and Mrs. Roadside, and then the 7:45 train back to Philadelphia.

The once-grand and glorious Steel Pier, just off the boardwalk near the Taj Mahal.

Unfortunately, because the hunt for lunch took so long, we found ourselves in a rush. By the point we finished at the Steel Pier Amusement Park, we had already entered the dinner hour without a definite idea on how to get to the Tun Tavern Brewery, located right near the train station.

Turns out, our excursion to Atlantic City proved rather timely. Not long after we got back, New Jersey's Governor Christie turned his attention to the beleaguered town and issued his plans for it.

Recognizing, as I had with this exploration, that all that lucre had done little to revive the city as a whole, the governor has proposed a state takeover of city hall, not too much unlike what Trenton had to do with another festering urban sore, Camden.

The city just recently hosted a "gambling summit," a term I would more closely associate with a Mafia gathering than a legitimate conference. Held at the Convention Center, Governor Christie further explained his own plans for the city and presided over a hearing for others to voice their own concerns as well.