New Jersey Beaches - Ocean City to Atlantic City

We had originally planned to go to Ocean City and Atlantic City for the Fourth of July. But our Boondocker Welcome host convinced us that the traffic and crowds would be a terrible way to spend the holiday. So after our quiet, small-town Fourth of July, we headed to these famous beaches on the fifth. We got there early, and we got a peaceful view of the ocean.

We came early because we read that bikes are allowed on this 2.5-mile boardwalk only in the morning. Instead of walking, we rode our bikes right past the ferris wheel and the arcade games this morning.

We were glad to see that everyone stops at 9 a.m. for the flag-raising ceremony. We parked our bikes and watched as a tourist family raised the flag under the guidance of several military personnel.

It was a great way to start a morning, as the Star Spangled Banner played, followed by "I'm Proud to be an American." The red, white, and blue looks great against that blue-sky background with the sound of the crashing waves behind it.

We took a little stroll on the deserted beach this morning. The sun-worshipers won't arrive until later, but it was nice to stroll among the broken sea shells. We haven't seen many full-sized unbroken shells on the east coast yet.

The beach-chairs-and-umbrella crowd haven't shown up yet today.

As we biked on down the boardwalk, the traffic picked up. The middle lane is reserved for early-morning runners, while the bikes get the outside lanes. Later today it will all be filled with pedestrians strolling without fear of being hit by a bicycle. That's because bikes must be off the boardwalk by noon. We rode all the way to the far end, where the boardwalk gets narrower. No pictures there since we were concentrating on dodging pedestrians on this more congested section.

Ocean City, New Jersey, seems to be such a nice family beach town. Later today they will host a pie-eating contest. Denisa is sad that we missed the salt-water-taffy-sculpture contest last week. It's a clean town with beautifully tidy homes in every direction.

To get to the Atlantic coast, you must cross one or more bridges. We are glad to have our EZ-pass transponder, so it can automatically charge us when we cross a toll bridge. The other option is for the transportation department to mail you a bill (for a larger amount) based on your vehicle tag address. Since we so seldom get our mail, it would certainly include late fees by the time we got it paid 

Since this is a beach day, we made another stop. This is Longport Beach--just a few miles north. There's no boardwalk, and we were lucky enough to find a parking place on the street for a quick walk on the beach.

We even found some intact sea shells on this stretch of sand. So Denisa does what she always does--used them to spell something.

She shelled up "NJ" for this New Jersey beach day.

The next stop of the day was supposed to be a visit to see Lucy. That's the name of a six-story-tall wood and tin elephant that has been welcoming visitors to Margate City, New Jersey since 1881. But Lucy is undergoing a year-long refurbishment that has her under wraps for now.

So we headed six miles down the highway to our final beach town of the day--Atlantic City. Unlike the tidy residential areas around Ocean City beach, this town has an older grisly look.

Except for a few grand casino entry ways, the streets of Atlantic City look a little sketchy.

We drove to the tip of the beach, because our first destination is this sea coast's lighthouse. At 171-feet, it's the tallest lighthouse in New Jersey, and the third tallest masonry lighthouse in the United States. It's so tall that Mark had a very hard time getting all of it (and Denisa) in the same picture.

Denisa can check another lighthouse visit off her very long list this summer. This is the Absecon Lighthouse and lightkeeper's house, with its characteristic light yellow and one black stripe paint job. Besides different light patterns that come from the light at the top at night, each lighthouse also has a unique color and stripe type so that mariners can tell the difference during the day.

We left the pickup parked at the lighthouse parking area, and made the fast walk through a sketchy neighborhood to get to the end of the Atlantic City boardwalk. It was almost deserted down here since few people actually walk the entire length of this 5.5-mile boardwalk. The Atlantic City boardwalk holds a couple records. It is the longest boardwalk in the world, and the oldest boardwalk in the United States.

Not too far from this north end is a wave-shaped glass building, with its tall mirrored tower of hotel rooms.

The mirror-glass tiles on the outside perfectly reflect a couple boardwalk strollers on this beautiful blue-sky day. 

We decided to duck into the casino, and found out that they give new players a t-shirt and $25 in free play just for stopping in. We like to play the game where you use only their free money and see how much money we can take home.

After using up the Ocean Casino's money, we headed on down the wide boardwalk.

Because this is also a beach, we walked down one of the side board walks that leads over the dunes to the ocean. It's a long walk through the sand to get to the water!

Our second stop on the boardwalk was at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. We were surprised to see that they also give new members a generous amount of free play money. We each got $20 and began "investing" it. We had a few lucky spins that made a difference, and we can say that between the two casinos, we took their $90 total in free play, and left with $62 more than we came with. This is a very profitable walk in Atlantic City!

We also found some good photo ops along the way. Denisa especially liked the angel wings at Hard Rock.

But the thing she wanted to see the most was the long-time home of the Miss America Pageant. Based on watching the pageant from home, she was picturing this as a more glamorous city. Atlantic City invented the pageant in 1921 as a way to lengthen the tourist season past Labor Day. Besides a hiatus in Las Vegas, this city was home to Miss America until 2019, when it was moved to a casino in Connecticut.

We knew that we still had a very long walk back to the pickup, and we were still over a mile from the pageant location. But we are hikers that have a hard time stopping before we get to our destination. So we just kept hiking that boardwalk until we got to the past home of Miss America pageant--Boardwalk Hall.

Even though the pageant has moved, women can still get crowned right on the boardwalk here in Atlantic City. This is the real reason that we made that extra mile hike (and another mile back). Denisa hasn't worn a crown since football homecoming in 1977. She was wanting that crown with the ocean and beach in the background.

At that point we were about 4 miles away from the pickup. They have human-powered rickshaws that move visitors up and down the boardwalk. But Mark walked right on by. This is good exercise, and we can walk faster.

We had a good time on this New Jersey beach day. Plus, we got some good exercise biking and hiking on boardwalks all the way from Ocean City to Atlantic City.