Karen’s niece Liz is on beach volleyball team with Kara Zakrzewski. The name of the team is Team Mizara and they competed in the 2008 National Beach Championships at Ashbridges Bay Park in Toronto this past weekend. The girls ended up 5th overall. Way to go Team Mizara.
It’s that time of year again, the 150th Paris Fair. This is my 5th year entering the photography contest. Going to all the Bon Jovi concerts paid off … a 2nd place finish in “Dominant Red”. I’ve come to the conclusion that all of my winning photographs are taken when I’m on vacation. I think I need to take more vacations.
For our last day here at the shore, we decided to go to the beach in Avalon. A big difference that I noticed right away was that there were many many more cars heading for the beach than during the week. We stopped at the Acme grocery store to pick up snacks for the beach.
Once we got to Avalon, we had a tough time finding a parking spot since it’s the weekend but we did get lucky. It was another strenuous day at the beach. The beach was packed but by about 4pm, it starts to thin out.
We wanted to have dinner at the campsite so we picked up Mexican from Tortilla Flats. If it wasn’t for the internet, we never would have found this place. The food was fresh and really tasty.
Tonight is Halloween at the campground, so after dinner we grabbed our cameras and started walking around the campground. You can’t imagine the decorating that some families do for tonight. There are lots of lights, flags, statues, blow-ups, etc. There were two families that went all out. The first family had creepy people walking around their site … for example Michael Myers, along with creatures hanging from trees, bats flying overheard on strings, and smoke rising from the tombstones. The second family had a haunted house complete with a coffin, tent filled with smoke that the kids had to walk through, and a graveyard. We thought that maybe we should give out candy but that thought quickly left us when we learned that over 1000 kids had signed up. Our neighbours told us that you have to beware when you take the tram ride on Halloween night, since it’s prone to “break down”, and then freaky people come out of the woods to scare the daylights out of everyone!
Once we got back from our walk, we enjoyed our last campfire with a batch of smores … yummy.
It’s our last day here (well … actually not … more on that later) so we figured we should go to the beach. Karen did some research last night and learned that Stone Harbor and Avalon were good choices for the over 35 crowd. We packed up the car and headed to Stone Harbor. We took the long way to get there so we could enjoy the scenery.
We picked up a lunch from Yvette’s Cafe (another TripAdvisor find) and proceeded to the beach. We picked our spot and spent the afternoon doing what we usually do at the beach … eating, napping, reading and taking pictures. It was getting near the time that we had to leave when Karen came to a conclusion … we didn’t really have to leave tomorrow. What’s stopping us from staying another day. Nothing. Right then we decided that if we can get the campsite for another night then we’ll stay.
We picked up dinner from Fai’s Chinese Restaurant and had a lovely dinner back at the campsite. Tonight the “Phantom’s Haunted Carriage” cruised through the campground. Everyone here has really gone all out with decorating their campsites for Saturday night’s “Trick or Treating”.
We had a nice quick campfire before going to Wildwood to enjoy the Friday night fireworks on the beach. Americans have awesome fireworks.
You can’t come to New Jersey and not stalk … uh .. I mean take a rock & roll tour.
We started our tour in Sayreville at the Sayreville War Memorial High School. This is where Jon Bon Jovi began his musical career. On our way to our next stop, we grabbed some lunch at Panera Bread. The restaurant also has free WiFi so we were able to post a couple of days of blog entries and check emails.
Our next stop was a Christmas Tree Shops in Freehold. This stop has nothing to do with the rock & roll tour but since it was on the way, we thought let’s check out the bargains.
Bon Jovi’s “Cross Road” album cover was shot at the Roadside diner in Wall Township. We arrived just as they were closing so we were not able to get inside and have a look. We headed to Red Bank and to the Count Basie Theatre. The theatre has been the sight of many benefit performances by Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen and Southside Johnny.
Our next stop was to Jon Bon Jovi’s house. I had an address and we routed “Jack” to it but when we got there, there was no gate. We remember seeing a television show where Jon was interviewed at his home and from what we remembered it was right on the banks of the Navesink River. The address we had was not on the river. We drove up and down Navesink River Road but couldn’t figure out which house was his. Maybe next time.
Since it was getting late, we decided to head to Asbury Park. We made our pilgramage to The Stone Pony. The bar has been in existance since the early 70’s and has seen many great performances by the artists listed above. We walked down the boardwalk and took a peek inside Convention Hall and the Paramount Theatre.
It was getting late and starting to rain so we headed home but first stopped at Luigi’s Restaurant and Pizza in Neptune for dinner.
Maybe we’ll see Jon at the beach tomorrow!
