Long Beach, New Jersey (3/21)

Ah, so today I had nothing to do. I poked around at a couple folks and it seemed they were quite busy as they tend to be, but no matter! I can certainly improvise given the right amount of desperation. And the muse struck; with the addition of the new GPS to my gadget arsenal, I could safely wander and not worry about having a repeat of last weekend. And with that, I was off.

I wandered down Route 73 and to Route 70, heading east toward the coast. I wanted to think, and I supposed that the ocean pummeling the shore was a good soundtrack for that. I was soon barreling through the pine barrens. I stopped to take a few photos, since it was pretty refreshing to see these sites in my new state. It had been awhile since I had escaped the concrete and glass of the cities and suburbs.



Anyway, it was a pretty enjoyable ride. I hadn't traveled on the state routes for very far, so it was good to head to a portion of the state that didn't enjoy an interstate pass-through. After taking two or three photos, I realized that the in-camera memory would only hold a grand total of five; a new memory card was in order. When I was nearly to the Garden State Parkway (which shoots north all the way to the New York City area from South Jersey), I noticed a plaza with a Best Buy and Target, so I pulled in. The shopping center was in a place called Manahawkin, which to me is such a ridiculous name for a city.



As you can note in that last image, those spaces were for fuel efficient or carpool cars only. I should have scolded that lady riding alone in an SUV, but I didn't care enough. I would suppose that my car fits the bill, though.

Regardless of proper parking etiquette, again I was off, heading down Route 72 toward Long Beach, New Jersey. I really didn't know that this was my destination until I got there, honestly; I just wanted to wander somewhere that involved water and sand, and a moderately long drive. The pines gave way to smaller trees, which gave way to land too soft and sandy for anything of height to grow in. A couple of bridges later and the reason for Long Beach's name became pretty evident.




In the map above, obviously, Long Beach is the super long strip of land jutting into the sea. The last photograph was taken facing west, clearly, since the mid afternoon sun was in that direction. I kept driving and eventually I got to land's end, complete with a nice public beach that was desolate thanks to the mid-forties weather.

Just the beach.

I'll keep this in mind if I find any unexploded shells.

Don't get ripped...

My shadow. I know there's a super deep thing that I can say here, but it escapes me.

Footprints and a gull.

I spent a bit of time pacing about on the beach before heading up into the city to look for something to eat. It's strange sometimes to walk around coastal cities, as everything seems to have one or several decks, and the feeling that you get when you glance oceanward and see nothing but sky over the buildings.

Familiar territory.

I'm sure they have a million of them, but this would work well on Planet Money's signs of the economic downturn.

The kind of surf shop my dad would love to see.

I walked around a bit before spotting the Wawa above, and decided that would be a pretty good option for food, since the sunset was approaching pretty quickly and I wanted something quickly. I'm not a big fan of eating in restaurants alone, anyway. So I went in and got dinner.

Yes, welcome. I hope nobody noticed the flash when I took this.

Would have been an okay food option had it not been boarded up. And by boarded I mean cardboarded.

Tasty fish.

Dinner. Only a little bit sandy. And yes, that's a scary claw of some variety!

So I ate up my sandwich while sitting on a nice log bench, waiting for the sun to sink lower and lower in the sky behind me. I watched a few guys in full body wet suits surfing for awhile, and assumed they were ridiculously cold in the ocean water. I snapped a few more shots as the night started to creep in.

A cool looking house/whatever it was.

I took a bit of video, too, though I'm sure the quality isn't that great. The soothing ocean sounds are pretty nice though, I must admit.

After it started to get darker I decided to start heading back, so I walked up to my car and marked the beach with my GPS. To my surprise, it automatically named the spot "beach", though I wanted to be a bit more specific, so I changed it anyway. Pretty impressive, though, that the little thing realized I was at the coast.

Walking back - my car's on the right side.

This was a pretty cool view, I thought.

Made me laugh on the way out, so I snapped a picture on the return trip.

I liked the name of the road.

And I arrived back home at about 8:30. A pretty good day trip, I must admit. The GPS handled everything mightily, with naught a discouraging word as I deviated from its planned trip and it had to compensate. I chatted with Adriana on the way back for a few minutes to discover she was also on the road from Duluth back to Minneapolis.

For those of you interested, the coordinates of my GPS marker are as follows: 39.649839, -74.173553