Welcome to New Jersey - and Cape May

 After driving the motor home off the Lewes - Cape May ferry, we were immediately welcomed to New Jersey by the state sign. This is the first trip into New Jersey for the motor home, so we can check another state off our list.

We could have kept driving to our camping destination 54 miles from here. But we had heard so many good things about the town of Cape May, we just wanted to stop and look around. So we parked the motor home at a large Tractor Supply parking lot, and unhooked the pickup for a drive around Cape May. Of course, our first destination was the Cape May Lighthouse.

The Cape May Point State Park is free and open to the public, with plenty of free parking. That used to seem like such a little thing before we started traveling in the northeast. Now we know that free and plentiful parking and free parks are a rare find. We already feel welcome in New Jersey! 

We hiked the wooden ramp over the dunes and instantly found ourselves in the sand of the beach--but a long ways from the water.

This is one of the deepest sand beaches we have ever be on in our lives!

When we finally hiked all the way to the water, the waves were breaking right on the shore. We love to watch the water curl right in front of us!

Some times we would stand and watch a little too long, and get smacked by a big wave. We weren't planning to get wet today.

We didn't see any shells on any of our beach stops in Delaware, but we're hoping for more shells now that we're in New Jersey. A stop at the nature center at the state park taught us something new. We have been picking up sand dollars (or at least pieces of sand dollars) from coast to coast.

But often what we were seeing had five notches in them. That is actually a keyhole urchin, instead of a sand dollar. 

On the ferry ride over from Delaware, we had visited with a local resident of Cape May. He gave us some great advice of things to see here. Besides the lighthouse, he encouraged us to walk the historical downtown. Shut off from vehicular traffic, the downtown streets are now pedestrian malls. They were busy with plenty of weekend tourists.

He also told us that Cape May has many great places to eat. We picked one, mainly because it had a buy-one-get-one-free entree special. They were both great! It was just across the street from the Cape May Beach, which we found charged an admission fee. A woman sitting at the entrance of the beach would collect $8 per person to walk on the sand. We were glad that we already had our sand time at the free state park.

Our new Cape May friend also encouraged us to walk the historical residential streets. We have to say that the architecture here is charming. We kept taking pictures of the interesting paint jobs and lacy trim on these old houses.

They call them doll houses. With their colorful paint jobs and fancy wood work, they look like something every girl would dream to house her dolls. 

It seems to us that every doll house is required to have at least one hydrangea growing in the front yard. We must be here during peak bloom, as the bushes were just covered with flowers.

We enjoyed talking to the man driving the vehicle next to us on the ferry, and we followed his good advice on things to see and do during our short visit to Cape May. He also invited us to his house. When he repeated his address two different times, we decided that he really wanted us to stop by. So we stopped in for a visit to his very nice house located right off the beach. We feel vey welcomed to New Jersey!

After spending several hours exploring Cape May, we drove a few miles north to see the beach at Wildwoods, New Jersey. This desire to visit here all started because Denisa saw a neat picture of the entry to the Wildwoods beach. The picture was of one family posing beside the brightly painted beach balls that are scattered in front of the large letters of the beach name. We tried the same pose, but with completely different results. Mark is completely lost among the crowds trying to get that same shot. He's the guy standing on the beach ball to the right of the capital W.

So we got smarter and put Denisa in the foreground, with the crowd behind her. It sure doesn't look like the tourist brochure that has the smiling family sitting and standing on several different beach balls with the entire place to themselves!

This is another deep beach! They have laid out a board walk to make the quarter-mile walk through the sand easier at Wildwoods.

They have an amusement park complete with a wooden roller coaster and other thrilling rides right on the beach at Wildwoods.

After a nice introduction to a couple beach towns in New Jersey, we picked up the motor home in the parking lot and started our drive inland. It was a 54-mile drive to our camping spot in the tiny town of Newtonville.

We're at another Boondockers Welcome site, where we were warmly welcomed by our host, Rick. He's a truck driver, so he had great advice for the best routes to drive throughout New Jersey. This state has some expensive turnpikes that we are trying to avoid. Rick is also a bit of a collector, and we are camped out by the barn with a view of his truck collection. We have 30-amp electricity and water, and we are settled in for a five-day stay here. 

We're a little confused about the use of words like "township" and "borough" but our new address is so tiny that we don't even have a stop light or a single store in our town. But we do have a post office--which is part of the neighbor's house. So during our stay we got our mail delivered via general delivery for the first time this summer. We're already on a first-name basis with the local postmaster, and we have really liked our fist day in this new state. We feel very welcome in New Jersey!