Atlantic City, Hereford Inlet and Cape May

Since lighthouses were turning out to be a theme on this trip I decided to venture into Atlantic City to see the Absecon lighthouse. It wasn’t much but maybe that was just the setting. I just did not care for AC. It smelled and was full of sprawling resort casinos. Maybe if I had gone in under the cover of darkness but at 7am it is not a great place. The next lighthouse was the Hereford Inlet lighthouse. It’s pretty small and looks like a little fancy house but there’s a nice long boardwalk that you can travel that leads to the beaches so I strolled along and walked along the ocean looking for seashells. New Jersey doesn’t have many seashells. I discovered this cool new feature on my camera that lets me focus on one thing and everything else around it gets blurred. I think its really cool.I also played with the "fish eye" feature:
My next stop was Cape May state park. They have a really nice lighthouse but it costs $7 to go in so I decided to forego that expense and instead enjoy the nature trail where I caught sight of this monster bird. The trail wound around to the ocean so I made my way back to the parking lot along the shore line. There’s a decrepit fort thing that’s wasting away in the middle of the beach that looks pretty odd. When I got back to my car I decided to call around and see if I couldn’t find a camp site for the night. I knew I would have a horrible day if I had to worry about where I would camp that night. I called a state park and, although they were full, the lady was very helpful and gave me the name of several other campgrounds in the area. I was starting to panic when the first few were sold out but Ringing Rocks Campground saved the day. The guy said that a family that was planning to stay all weekend had just left that morning and they had one spot available. I booked it right away and decided to celebrate by lying on the beach and enjoying a good book. It was wonderful. There’s no swimming allowed at Cape May so the beach only had a few people fishing. After soaking up the sun I moved onto the East Point Lighthouse. It is quite rural and very charming. There’s a small beach out in front so I decided to hang out and continue reading my book. The beach was actually pretty gross with a couple dead fish and icky water but it was just so quiet and peaceful that I really enjoyed it. Definitely a good spot to avoid the crowds.
I enjoyed watching these dogs play in the water:

Sandy Hook, Fort Hancock, Double Trouble, Barnegat

From Mount Mitchell you can see Sandy Hook, which is part of the Gateway National Recreation area. They have a lot of beaches (including the biggest nude beach along the Atlantic!!) but because I was pressed for time I went to the end of the island to see Fort Hancock and the Sandy Hook lighthouse. I’ve been to many forts but I think Fort Hancock is the biggest and most intact I’ve ever seen. What’s really cool is that Officer’s Row faces the ocean so it’s quite a scenic spot. Many of the buildings are now condemned but it is quite the sprawling compound. They had an old mortar battery that went back into the woods. I love the idea of these "disappearing guns".Amidst the fort is the oldest working lighthouse in the U.S! It was designed and built in 1764. At that time, it stood only 500 feet from the tip of Sandy Hook; however, today, due to growth caused by littoral drift, it is almost one and a half miles inland from the tip.This is the Visitor Center for Gateway: Continuing on down the Garden State Parkway, my next stop was Double Trouble state park.It is in the Pinelands National Reserve. The Pinelands is classified as a United States Biosphere Reserve and in 1978 was established by Congress as the country’s first National Reserve. It includes portions of seven southern New Jersey counties, and encompasses over one-million acres of farms, forests and wetlands.

Double Trouble has a historic village that revolved around cranberry farming. There are still active cranberry bogs to this day and you can observe the harvest in the fall. It was a really nice spot. I guess I never thought of New Jersey as a place for cranberry farming.

My last stop of the day was the Barnegat Lighthouse. It took awhile to get there because it’s on a barrier island and you have to drive on the one road that’s full of tourists running all over the crosswalks so you can never drive over 20mph. I will never understand how people think going to a beach town is relaxing. Anyway I finally made it out to the light. It was a really nice lighthouse. There’s also a jetty/pier thing that you can walk along and enjoy the vista. One of the last remnants of maritime forest on Long Beach Island is found at Barnegat Lighthouse State Park and there’s a short trail through it. It was really cool to be on sand and then all of a sudden be in the middle of a forest. It was a nice way to end the day.

But alas the day was not over. I had planned on camping and didn’t make reservations because a two night minimum is required and I was only passing through. After calling a few state forests I quickly realized that I would not be camping this evening so I figured I’d just grab a hotel. After calling around I decided my best bet was Atlantic City because it’s full of hotels. Those that weren’t sold out had extremely high rates ($230 for a Howard Johnson!!) and the motels in my price range looked like something you would see on Cops. After driving around and calling hotels and getting extremely frustrated I ended up at the Taffy Motel. Suffice to say it had a bed and a shower so I made do but was out the door by 7:00am the next day.

Glenmont Estate, Mount Mitchell, Twin Lights

Included in the admission to Thomas Edison's site is a tour of his home, the Glenmont Estate. I had to get a parking pass for my car because its located inside America’s first planned, gated community Llewellyn Park. Waiting for my tour to start, I walked around the grounds. The gardens are gorgeous! I love how everything is blooming.

The Edison’s are buried in the backyard.

I have toured a lot of historic mansions and this is one of my favorites. I really liked the design and layout. There was also a lot of window seats which I think are so adorable. Our guide was really great and gave some great information and then let us explore at our own place.

It was nearly 1:00pm by this point and I still had half of the Jersey shore to see so I had to get going.

I stopped at the Mount Mitchell overlook which, at 266 feet, is the highest natural elevation on the Atlantic seaboard (excluding islands) from Maine to the Yucatan. Nowadays the park is home to a 9/11 memorial. The path leading to the memorial chronicles the 9/11 events. A table of black granite lists the names, ages, and towns of those 147 individuals from Monmouth county who were lost. At the center, a light stone sculpture by local artist Franco Minervini of an eagle “ascends to a better world.” The eagle has in its grasp a beam from the World Trade Center. It was a sunny day but there was smog so I could only barely make out the Verrazano bridge and the NYC skyline. Apparently many people came to this spot on 9/11 to see what was happening. It’s a beautiful, tragic spot.

Next stop was the Twin Lights of Navesink. It was definitely one of the most interesting lighthouses I'd been two because there were 2 lights! You could walk up in one of the towers which had a great view.This was the first lighthouse to test a Fresnel lens. There was a display of one which I liked because I'd never seen a lens up close before.Here's a picture of both lights from back in the day:

Morristown and Thomas Edison National Historic Sites

Well I just completed my 5^th Annual Memorial Day Road trip. My lifelong quest to see all the units of the National Park Service has its origins in the Annual Memorial Day trip. So this year I decided to go to New Jersey. I’ve been to New Jersey a few times before but only the parts right around NYC. It is called the Garden State and I wanted to see more of what Jersey had to offer (besides an alcoholic drunk throwing up on a bench in a subway station).

I left Friday after work and drove about 4.5 hours to Stephens State Park. Normally I don’t like setting up camp after dark (I like to get the lay of the land) but decided I’d rather be closer to my goal so I have as much time as possible to enjoy Jersey. I headed out bright and early the next morning and my first stop was Morristown Historic Park. It is divided into two sections and I was at Washington’s Headquarters unit. I had never heard of Morristown but it has a storied history. Morristown is called the military capital of the revolution because of its strategic location, being the source for many essential supplies, and being used twice as the winter headquarters for George Washington. The Ford Mansion was the site of the "hard winter" (December 1779 – May 1780) quarters of George Washington and the Continental Army. That winter remains the coldest on record for New Jersey. Jess and I had just been to Valley Forge which I always thought was the toughest. Not only were the men at Morristown hungry and sick but they had no clothes! Half the time they were on control in just blankets! None of the buildings were open so I wandered around taking pictures of the pretty flowers. I then went over to the more rural Jockey Hollow unit. I walked along the Primrose Brook trail to enjoy the quiet woods. By the time I got done with my hike the Visitor Center was open. It wasn’t much but there was a replica of a soldier’s hut that was pretty cool. Behind the Visitor’s Center is the Wick House and Barn. Both were restored very nicely.

My next stop was the Thomas Edison National Historic Site. I didn’t really know to expect so when Jack was directing me there and I saw a massive building with a fence around it, I assumed it was some condemned factory. After seeing a parking sign with an NPS logo I realized this site comprised of Edison’s factory. It costs $7 to tour the complex and it is so worth it. I was so impressed with this site. The staff gives you an audio tour and you can tour all three floors of the factory.

The entryway had the original time clock that was used by Edison.

The library was huge and even had a bed which Edison used to take naps.

The storage room had a bit of everything, including animal hooves.

The machine shop was my favorite. Everything was restored so precisely that it looked like at any moment the workers would start filing in and fire up the machines. I even got to see a phonograph demonstration. The phonograph was Edison’s favorite invention and the one he was proudest of. Can you even imagine a time before sound was recorded?Other rooms included a drafting room, photography studio and darkroom, instrument room, chemistry room, precision machining shop and much more. The third floor had many of Edison’s inventions displayed. Edison is the third most prolific inventor in history, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. This compound basically housed everything from concept to execution and it was amazing to see.