New Jersey, my home state, is absolutely beautiful. Not every square mile, true, but if you spend some time here the natural beauty will win you over. Plenty of hiking trails, biking trails, waterways, canoeing on the Delaware & Raritan Canal, miles of coastline (“the shore”, not “the beach”), Grounds for Sculpture (as mentioned upthread), preserved land…
Not to mention great schools, easy access to New York, Philadelphia, Delaware, D.C., & Baltimore, great mid-Atlantic weather, and about a million other things, each of which shudders in the knowledge that all most of the country knows about our state is what they see on Jersey Shore. :rolleyes:
Plus, my wife is a Jersey girl, and she’s the best. Too late, she’s taken.
A couple of years ago I was in NJ and ended up at the Skylark Diner. It was pretty late, like 1130 at night, and half of the place was a normal diner, and the other half was this sort of bizarre club, with a DJ playing 80s music with a house beat and all these kids hanging around, I’d never seen anything like it. Food was pretty good, but a bit pricey and not really your typical diner fare.
I live an hour away and haven’t been to the Boardwalk in a while, but I recall there’s an actual boardwalk there. I remember walking on wood planks; and multiple businesses, all related now to the amusement park, but since it has been there since 1907 it has likely morphed during the 100 years.
If only you’d made it to The Sussex Horse Show or some of the quieter places north of there like the park around High Point. Its a little different from what you remember north jersey being and I think you would have had a great day.
Better yet, stop back some time. And if terminal C really bugs you, AC has an airport too. But skip the casinos. If the flight doesn’t serve a meal, there’s always The Smithville Inn (not a bad thing on the menu and you can smile when someone tells you its haunted).
And if you take a drive down Ocean Avenue, all the classic & kitschy hotels might just come flooding back:
The Adventurer, Aqua Beach, The Gondolier, The Attaché, The For de Lis, The Waikiki, The Crusader, The Olympic, The Bristol, The Oceanic, The Armada…
(Bonus points if you can remember which ones had a snack bar so you could bring lunch back to your umbrella & blanket)
And if a Cessna flies overhead pulling a banner, I can honestly say that I had nothing to do with it…
(…Me? I’ll probably be up north; riding bikes with my kids to Applegates for ice cream. )
Ocean City, MD, has a boardwalk along the beach that’s over 2 miles long. It is a wooden boardwalk above the sand, with multiple unrelated businesses opening onto it, and nothing but the boardwalk rail between the boardwalk and the beach itself in most places. (At the lower end, there are shops on both sides of the boardwalk for a little ways.)
It may not be the equal of the best NJ boardwalks (none of which I’ve visited, so I can’t say) but it would seem to qualify as a ‘boardwalk’ by any reasonable definition, including yours.
In Monmouth County, home of Earl, there are a number of empty federal roads seemingly used once in a blue moon by the military. Traffic may be heavy on other roads, but even the craziest locals know to never try to take a short-cut on one of these.
Rumor has it the jeeps pull you over so fast that it would seem like they appear from thin air.
No… really… you don’t. Its military, bruddah. Leave 'em be.
Can’t remember the name of the cafe, but they made home made blueberry cheesecake ice cream, with fresh berries, of course. It was amazing! Seaside Heights is where I smoked my first cigarette when I was 14. We stayed there for a summer. Awesome memories! Riding bikes all over the place, catching crabs off the docks, walking half a block to the beach whenever we pleased…it was a kid’s play land.
I dunno, I see it here on the map. If I’m going from rt 34 to rt 33, I think this shortcut would work just fine. Make a right on Tarawa, left on Guadalcanal, then a right onto Normandy, left onto Midway, and then another left on an unnamed road that will take you right to 33. Ok, it’s a service road next to 33, but I’m sure you could drive through the fence or something.
I’ll add in one other town name not yet mentioned: Weehawken. Some of the most spectacular views of Manhattan you’ll ever see, the site of the Hamilton-Burr duel, and one of the very few real place names Dr Seuss ever used. He allegedly said it was funny enough on its own, no need to change it.
I love their ice cream! My friend and I were saying the other day it’s been a while since they had that apple pie sundae in a glass thing… that was sure tasty. I might have to go get some of their ice cream tonight. I’m a fan of their Graham Central Station flavor.
Small world. I was friends with their original head chef’s family. We’d drive over from Burlington and my friend would run into the kitchen and come out with some of the best food for us to munch on. Usually a cheese steak or something
NJ sucks. Stay away, especially from Cape May County.
Seriously… the boating and fishing are awful. There is no Victorian charm; the barrier islands are too nice to the point that you can’t enjoy yourself. Who wants to swim with dolphins?! HORRIBLE! Nothing to see here; move on.
No really… go rot someplace else.
Take a ride through Ocean Drive and then open a thread called,* I took a ride through Ocean Drive in NJ and OMG…*
I spent a few days there in late October. I told a coworker about it, and said it was a little sad that it was too cold to go swimming. She mocked me roundly, asking why I expected to go swimming at Ocean City in October. It occurred to me later that she thought that I was in Ocean City, NJ.
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