New Jersey and The Jersey Shore!

Our time in New Jersey may have been shorter than we expected, but we really enjoyed our time there! We were about 18 minutes from the beach and spent lots of time playing in the ocean! The boys loved the water and even though it was freezing cold they would body board and come out shivering, warm up and go back in!

When we first got to New Jersey this Texas family felt a little out of place! People were short with words and not very friendly… well, not in a Texas friendly kind of way. At first I thought they were just rude, but turns out people in New Jersey were really nice… in their own ways.

Some interesting facts about New Jersey:

1) You may not make a left hand turn across traffic. You must exit right to turn left. This resulted in a lot of loopty-loop driving for me because I just did not get it!

2) You may not pump your own gas! At first this was so weird… until it was blistering hot or pouring rain… then I appreciated it!

3) Trees along the roadways are sprayed with a noxious chemical… to prevent THEFT! Who steals trees? Reading more into it I learned that people steal the evergreen Christmas trees and sell them down south where they don’t naturally grow.

While we were in New Jersey we went on a family hike in the Monmouth Battlefield State Park. What is cool about this park is that not only does it have reenactments occasionally, but there is also a few U-pick-em fruit orchards in the State Park! The hike was an easy 1 mile hike, BUT hurricane Sandy really messed up the trails which required us to climb up, over and through fallen debris.

New Jersey had great beaches and delicious pizza! It was one of my top 5 favorite places to visit!