Allaire State Park, Farmingdale, NJ
It's Ned filling in for Debi again. We were psyched when the sun came out this morning before we left our campsite in Lewes, Delaware. We also cracked up to view the campground we rolled into last night: It's a classic beach campground for the east coast, which is designed to line up a bunch of cars on asphalt, all parallel parked in a row. Let's just say that aesthetically it's a far cry from some of the beautiful campgrounds we've stayed at lately in the mountains.
We had camped very near the ferry landing, so we were able to arrive there with plenty of time to check out the impressive ferry building, before we drove onto the ferry for our trip to New Jersey. The hour and a half trip over was very luxurious with nice tall-back seats like in first class on an airplane. It was nippy enough on deck that I took several quick trips outside to snap photos, but was glad to join Debi in the warm comfort of the main cabin for most of the voyage.
When we arrived in Cape May, New Jersey, we immediately headed to the easternmost spit which runs along about half of New Jersey's southern coastline, and comprises the "Jersey Shore". The first town is Wildwood, which bowled us over with its abundant array of 1950's vintage motels. Almost every one had it's own dated sounding name (e.g. Gondelier, Carribean, Waikiki, Bucaneer, etc.) along with a matching bright color scheme. We loved in particular the fake palm trees which several motels used to decorate around their swimming pools. Also high on my list was the miniature golf course featuring several dinosaurs. The greatest thing about this area was that, although the themes and decor of all these motels had clearly been chosen in the 50's, almost all of them have been lovingly maintained with fresh paint, etc., which gave us a definite time-warp sensation as we drove through. Several years ago, we had driven on Route-66, in search of the iconic look of a past era. We found that experience much less real than this tour day, which seems much more authentic.
Next up were towns such as Stone Harbor, Avalon, and Sea Isle City. Suddenly, instead of interesting vintage motels, we saw row after row of very expensive looking, large, remodeled beach houses. After a while, the amount of premium real estate which we were viewing along this patch of shoreline kind of blew our minds. At least half of these places display "for rent" signs, so that it is clear that most of this area is used as vacation rentals during the summer season.
Further north we came to Atlantic City, which I was looking forward to after my introduction to its history from watching "Boardwalk Empire". We had both anticipated that it would be somewhat like driving through Las Vegas, so we were horrified to find it a terribly shabby old town, with a few extremely garish, but dated looking casino/hotels plopped down in the middle. The essence of all this for me was seeing, as we passed under one of Donald Trump's "lavish" hotels, that pigeons had built a rather large nest inside the "U" of TRUMP. The whole town left us feeling very sad. Debi wanted to ride our bikes around on the boardwalk which is between the hotels and the surf and see things from that side, but I was driving and never found a friendly looking place to park. Before we knew it, we were headed out of town and never got the bike tour to happen.
After this we headed up the turnpike for a while, but turned back to the shore at Seaside Heights, where "Jersey Shore" is filmed. This was a completely different experience with lots of modest little beach houses, combined with the the typically touristy ice cream, pizza, and t-shirt shops that we had expected further south today.
Our final resting place for the day is Allaire State Park near Farmingdale. It's a very sweet little campground with lots of trees, even though it's situated in the middle of a suburban neighborhood. Debi says this area reminds her from her childhood of typical New Jersey: green, country, with white clapboard houses.
