Traveling Companion: None
Vehicle: My truck
On Atlantic Avenue, further down the barrier island in the suburb of Margate, is Lucy the Elephant. Built in 1882, it is the oldest standing piece of "zoomorphic architecture" in the US and to my knowledge, the only one on the National Registry of Historic Places.
Then I continued south to Cape May, the southern tip of New Jersey. It seems to be a pretty cool little town, both literally (in that it was about 15 degrees colder than Philadelphia that day.) and in that other meaning. Unfortunately I did not have much time to explore it as I had to get back to Boone's new apartment so that we could go to IKEA. After we got back, I won easily won the race to assemble his Poäng chairs, finishing mine with enough time to finish assemble the ottoman before Boone had finished step 2 after giving up on step 1. In the spirit of fairness though, I should point out that the variability in the manufacturing process did make his chair more difficult to assemble than mine.
After paying my respects to those brave souls who perished at the hands (I think they have hands) of the Martians, I headed through the campus of Princeton, NJ, through the hills of northwestern New Jersey to High Point State Park. I had previous been at the gates of this park in the summer of 2001 when John and I drove to Quebec. We did not go in because the monument was under renovation. This trip was offseason, and so the monument was closed, but the park was still open and no entry fee was charged. I was the only one at the summit, and was it ever windy. (See the camera shake in this short video.) There are great views of the surrounding area, including a small lake right next to the High Point, which I believe is also known as Kittatinny Mountain.
Just a couple miles away, in a pretty cool cemetery (and underneath a bridge on I-84) is the monument marking the northern end of the New York-New Jersey border.
Somewhere out there in the Delaware River is the true New Jersey-New York-Pennsylvania tri-state point.
Then I headed east and crossed the Bear Mountian Bridge in the picturesque Hudson River Valley. Turning south, I went through Ossining, the nice old homes of which definitely would not have made me expect to find the notorious Sing Sing prison in the town if I did not already know it was there. On US-9, I did see a small road sign pointing to some sort of prison museum but otherwise, I saw nothing else about the only reason why I had ever heard of the town. I got to Bronxville in time for my sister to give me a tour of the spring breaking Sarah Lawrence campus before we headed to dinner. A couple hours later, I hoped back on the New Jersey Turnpike for my return to Boone's apartment. All in all, it was a good couple of days on the roads of the Garden State.