Monday, June 1st

Jersey Shore

The task for the day—get into New Jersey—was easy enough. A ferry was connecting Lewes with the southernmost point of that state. Judging by hotel distribution, the south also was the most attractive, or at least most popular part. Both Ocean City and Atlantic City weren’t far. I could have been done with about one hour of driving. But the driving through all of New Jersey needed to be done at some point and I decided to do part of it today.

The ferry sailed at quarter past eleven, with a suggested check-in time of one hour prior. I dilly-dallied through the morning, trying to catch up with the writing and left the motel close to ten to a slightly hazy sky and mid-eighties temperatures. That cold front was still nowhere to be seen.

Outside Cape Henlopen High School, a large portable electronic display, of the type normally used for announcing road construction, warned that there was a graduation event tomorrow and ‘expect delays.’ The school really was quite large. If everyone arrived for that event in a car, the resulting traffic jam would truly be epic.

The town sign for Lewes proper called it the first town in the first state. It indeed was the first settlement in Delaware, but natives, the British, and the Dutch each took their turn to wipe it out.. The road to the port bypassed the current day city. For a moment I considered to turn off and have a look, but such detours had proven disappointing once too many in the past.

The ferry terminal, meanwhile, proved to be rather nice. It only had been built in the late nineties with lots of wood and light. There was a snack bar and a gift shop, free Wifi and country music. A police officer made a round with a dog and later another one double checking tickets that had already been issued when entering the grounds. In due time boarding started. This time, the boat was filled to the brims, with a few spontaneous travellers left behind.

The crossing took eighty-five minutes over not entirely calm water. Then it was off the boat and into New Jersey, otherwise known as the Garden State. I could have stayed near the shores, but that would have either meant the Garden State Parkway, nothing other than a toll motorway, or the never ending sprawl of the ever so popular coast. Instead, I turned inland.

Here too the sprawl seemed to never end. Every once in a while the houses stopped for a river marsh, narrow, lazy river at the centre with a rather long stretch of grassy swamp on both sides. The Cape May County Mosquito Department confirmed a suspicion as to what those marshes were best for. Some of the marshes had a wider river, the one just outside Corbin City even featured one of my beloved drawbridges.

Eventually I was far enough inland that the draw of the coast subsided. I was entering into an endless and dense forest. It was interrupted briefly for May Landing, a city without a centre, and Egg Harbor City, which had one and a rather long and busy one to boot. Between the two I crossed over the Atlantic City Expressway which was, yes, yes, a toll road. New Jersey seemed to love these things.

The streets were wet here and indeed soon I had found the rain and, as the ever dropping thermometer confirmed, that cold front. Briefly the sun returned to a steaming road, but soon the wipers were busy for good.

I had returned to forests, currently still host to an ongoing if further spread out series of homes. Two river crossings (one of them with drawbridge) and an intersection later and the houses stopped. This stretch of road was marked as a scenic drive in the map. I wasn’t quite convinced that an undisturbed forest qualified as scenic, but then again, if you live in New York City it probably does. The forests even had their own semi-official hiking trail, the fifty mile Batona Trail, which I crossed at some point.

Briefly, the forest was interrupted by fields, a sign claimed cranberry fields, and houses. It started up half-heartedly again with houses shimmering through the trees by the road. In Chatsworth, a bunch of youths were sitting by the road, desperately wishing their parents had stayed in New York. Most cars had ‘for sale’ signs, perhaps in an attempt to stop those kids from getting away (being adolescents, they’d never use the hiking trail for that).

I arrived in Browns Mills, the only city warranting bold letters in the map for miles. It indeed was big enough for a hospital and an entirely confusing, poorly signed road layout. Through nothing but pure luck I found the right way out of town but it soon was blocked by the gatehouse of a military base. The map (and also various online maps) show the street to run straight through the base, but I didn’t feel like testing that. Instead, a road seemed to swing around. After a while, a dire sign warned that I was entering federal territory and that unauthorized personnel was not allowed and might be prosecuted. While there seemed to be civil cars on the road, they were few and far between and I may haven gotten a little scared. I turned around and drove back to Browns Mill to find another way. With quite a bit of difficulty I did. This new route was a lot more busy and free of warnings.

It passed by another gatehouse, this one announcing Fort Dix, a name that sounded vaguely familiar. The area was, in fact, the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, serving Air Force, Army, and Navy, respectively. Probably the most famous of the three is Lakehurst, site of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster. This wasn’t quite New York where, for some reason, I had always assumed this disaster to have happened.

Delayed by the military-induced shenanigans, I arrived at the main road north-east by the time the afternoon rush was in full swing. The road still ran mostly through forest, but there were houses and even entire gated communities hidden in them. The rain had turned into a ghastly drizzle. This wasn’t fun any more.

Luckily, the hotel wasn’t far. I had chosen it solely on price which meant it was in the middle of nowhere. Nominally, it was in Neptune (which for a Veronica Mars aficionado was a welcome bonus) but that in turn didn’t seem to mean much either. All the action happened another five miles down the by shore. But it was cold and rainy and I was tired. How good could that shore possibly be?