Adventures with Abi

This weekend's adventures featured a copilot: Abi, one of the only Johnsonburg staffers who also lives in Ocean County. I did forewarn her about the adventures that she'd have to accompany me for, mainly a visit to a church a little over two hours south of camp. But first: Friday!

We left for camp from Toms River mid-morning. The weather was incredibly gorgeous, the ride plenty easy. The highlight: getting stuck behind a tractor going 20 mph on County Road 612 in Allamuchy. While this might sound like the antithesis of highlight for some, I was enjoying driving with the windows down and feeling like I wasn't in any sort of hurry. It was a nice reminder that we were in the country. It made me smile.

We were at camp to work a junior high retreat, which went very well, I think. It was much cooler out, but still sunny. We had a great group of people together to work the retreat, and a pretty sweet speaker. I always enjoying working with youth in that beautiful place.

So, today. Ridiculous. While the drive to the Woodbury church was long, it was pretty easy and mostly lovely, through a lot of farm country and small, historic downtowns (Route 206 most of the way, which is becoming more familiar). Leaving camp, it was quite dark and cold, but we were able to enjoy the super moon until the pretty sunrise over said farms about an hour into our drive. The visit went well at the church and it turned out to be a beautiful spring day.

Leaving the church, I told Abi how sometimes when heading home, I liked to just choose county roads with a certain whimsy and see what I could discover as a way home. She said, "Ok!" so we turned right instead of left, although that first stretch lasted about two blocks when we saw a Rita's and remembered that it was the first day of spring! free ice! and stopped. While waiting on line for them to open, I double checked that she didn't mind wandering, mostly through Pine Barrens, and her response? "Sure! I don't get out much."

She said I could quote her on that.

This is what happened next:

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So we didn't make a ton of progress early on due to roads lying about their cardinal directions ("Let's go south northeast!" -Abi) but eventually found some really peaceful stretches of the Pine Barrens. It ended up being free stuff day as far as we were concerned-- our free water ices were one thing. Later, we pulled over to take a picture in front of a ridiculous super hero woman statue in front of a tire place and a worker ran out and gave us a bobblehead doll of said statue for free.



A while after that, we found a sign that said Free Manure, but we just took a picture, didn't actually receive any manure. Honest.



We stopped by Bass River State forest but didn't really have a good enough map available to find that pygmy forest that I've become infatuated with, so we carried on and eventually hit the east coast in Tuckerton. Since we didn't end up making a pilgrimage to anything in particular, we visited Barnegat Lighthouse before getting Abi home. The light was closed "due to worker illness" so we walked around and enjoyed the salty air for a few minutes before bringing our adventure to an end, 18 Wawas later (+2 more for me between Forked River and home). Hooray for South Jersey!


no power lines in Wharton State forest means a glorious drive through untrimmed pitch pines

I will be breaking 153,000 miles on my car tomorrow.