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| View from 5 to 10 miles away in NJ. The red object to the far right is the Parachute Jump on Coney Island |
It was not so hot and humid today: a beautiful day for the beach. Distances are hard to gauge here as the roads twist and turn but I think it is around 30 miles to the closest beach town. First stop: Ocean Grove full of nicely kept up Victorian homes and a very cute downtown full of boutiques. We ate outside at a cute Italian restaurant. We walked along the boardwalk into the next town, Asbury Park, home of Bruce Springsteen. Not so nice and had some seedy businesses along the Boardwalk but we loved the murals (wait for them). We drove north as far as we could along the water to Sandy Hook, a pennisula that Steve could see from his bedroom when he lived in Coney Island but never visited. It is part of The Gateway National Seashore, part of which was near him in NY. There was an old Army base there where there was munition testing. There were a few signs warning about unexploded ordinance. There was also a sign on the road warning of terrapins crossing, a new sign for me. I was surprised to see prickly pear so far north. We ended up setting up camp directly across from Coney Island. We could see the Parachute Jump, the Verranzo Bridge, the New World Trade Center and the Empire State building all at once. I let the GPS figure out a way home, never again. It was mostly expressways (tolls!!!) but probably took twice the miles.
Weird Signs:
It is Easy to get Lost in New Jersey! (No kidding! This seemed to be from the state tourism board.)
Favorite bumper sticker: Don't Hate on the Garden State
While I was fishing around in some car compartment, I came across my Garden State DC, perfect music for driving the Jersey Shore but alas, it was empty.
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| Three of the above are my pans of the beautiful Victorians in Ocean Grove NJ. The Sea Monstor mural is in the Asbury Park Casino remains. No KP, I didn't see the clam downtown but I might have overlooked it. |
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| Close-up of detail |
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| Center meeting house. this whole town is a Methodist retreat with church meetings in this auditorium and in an outdoor one on the beach |
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| Crosses all over the place |
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| Asbury Park Boardwalk |
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| View of the Verrazanno Bridge from Sandy Hook with my cheap camera |
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| Dead horseshoe crab |
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| Blue crab? |
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| Noisy seabird |
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| Using Steve's camera from Sandy Hook NJ. Coney Island and Manhattan. Large building is the World Trade Center rebuild |
2 comments:
Hallo, you travel a lot and you see a lot i read in your stories. Nice. I should like to travel a lot as well bur my husband and i work five days a week.But in the weekends we go out as much as we can. We like it very much to go riding a bike. There is beautiful nature in our provence and every weekend we want togo out biking.
Two weeks ago my husband had a car accident and he has a broken wrist so we have to wait until it heals before we can go out again.
In the mean time i enjpy your travelling stories.
greetings from the netherlands: Carla
(do i make a lot of mistakes in english, tell me please)
Sue, Can't wait to see your photos of Ocean Grove! I haven't thought of it in a long time, but my grand parents had two modest houses there and we spent a couple of weeks there every summer. It was a lovely place to live, very methodist-camp like and all vehicles had to be garaged out of sight on Sundays or parked in lots outside the city (?) limits. It was great as a kid to have the run of the streets all day every Sunday.
We loved the boardwalk, beaches and the Asbury Park boardwalk was very nice and family friendly back in the 1960's. Was the giant bi-valve still on display downtown? Cheers, Kathy
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