I Love New Jersey!

Some plans got changed and scheduled rearranged, which freed me up to take a quick jaunt down to New Jersey with Megan this past weekend.  Her grandfather was turning 90 and she didn’t want to make the trip alone, so I ended up going with her.  I’d never actually been to New Jersey, so I figured why not.

The only previous experience I’d had with New Jersey was stopping at a rest stop a few years back, I’m guessing in Newark, and hated it.  It was smelly and slow and just an overall bad experience.

This time, however, was completely different.  I can honestly say after my short weekend there that I love New Jersey.

We stayed in a little beach town called Manasquan.  The hotel was about half a mile to the beach, which was convenient since the plan was to spend Friday there.  It was one of the nicest hotels I’ve stayed at in many years.  Normally I feel let down with a hotel because it’s so boring, but this one was quite nice.  It’s called Inn on Main (innonmainmanasquan.com) and I quite enjoyed it, including the little balcony we had and the fireplace.

Friday we headed to the beach and spent the day being lazy and enjoying ourselves.  Megan’s a big beach person, so she spent some time in the water while I laid under the gigantic umbrella/tent thing I bought, reading. The thought of salt water makes me want to vomit, but I went in for a little bit to appease her.

Friday night, once we’d showered and washed the salt water off ourselves, we went to Point Pleasant Beach, to one of the many famous boardwalks.  We played mini-golf and walked on the boardwalk, stopping to play games, have funnel cake for dinner, and eat ice cream.

Sadly, Megan somehow fractured her foot while we were there, so we had to cut things short.  The following morning we went to an urgent care facility and had some x-rays to confirm the diagnosis of OUCH.  Crutches, some pain pills, an ace bandage and 30 minutes later, we were on our way.

Her grandfather’s birthday party was later in the afternoon and since we’d decided to just head home early, we stopped by his house to say hello so it wasn’t a wasted trip.  Her mother and step-father were there, as well as some aunts and uncles and cousins, so they got to spend some time together before we left.

It was a long six hour drive home, getting stuck in traffic in almost every single state, but we made it home. Madison the cat was happy to see Megan, so that was good.

Reasons I love New Jersey:

  • Efficiency: everywhere I went was efficient.  The Dunkin Donuts was one of the fastest I’ve ever been to.  The urgent care facility had us in and out in about half an hour.
  • Polite people: everyone was so polite. From the waitresses where we ate, to the people on the beach, to the guy at the gas station.  Everyone was so polite.
  • The beach: I’m not big on swimming, but I love people watching and I got to do lots of that while we were there.
  • The little main street in Manasquan: I’ve always said I wanted to live in a little town where there’s a main street like in Pleasantville and this town had one.

There’s a bunch more reasons, but overall I loved it and you get the idea.  It was a great little vacation and I’m hopeful that I’ll get to go back at some point in the future!  Here’s some of the photos I took with my phone (the camera is still packed, but I’ll upload those eventually.)

No Responses to “I Love New Jersey!”

Leave a Reply