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After enjoying a quick visit with my youngest brother and his active family we escaped the suburbs of Philadelphia (my high school stomping grounds), crossing the  Delaware River on the Commodore Barry Bridge from Chester, Pennsylvania into south Jersey. A way-high butterfly -in-the-stomach inducing steel cantilever bridge named after Revolutionary War hero and Philly resident John Barry. My mind’s eye vision of Jersey invokes the congestion of  north Jersey, the airport and burning-smoke-stack-refineries around Newark, the Garden State Parkway up north, gritty Atlantic City and Ocean City on gray and rainy days; not a positive view point.  John McPhee’s literary interpretation of  The Pine Barrens always brings me up short,  forcing me to reconsider what  New Jersey has to offer.  During our ‘courting’  my wife and I canoed the Delaware River  from somewhere up-river of the Delaware Water Gap  down to Lambertville/New Hope. The Water Gap and the Delaware River bring me up short as well as far as Jersey is concerned. Another memory of visiting a family run blueberry farm somewhere in Jersey deep in my teen years. It, New Jersey, does not have to be all about that suburban-industrial corridor between NYC and Philly but one has to struggle to remember and see the New Jersey beyond.  Driving the back County roads and State routes from the Delaware River bridging down to Cape May jolted me as well. Way-enjoyable. Far enough removed that Federal and State prisons abound (you always know you are out aways when you start to encounter correctional institutions).  Farming is ever present in truck farms, orchards, nurseries, and farmer’s markets. Modest homes in small quaint towns. Towns that show some wear but with that wear also show some personality as well as some new growth: Pennsville, Salem, Bridgeton, Leesburg, and Cape May Court House. South Jersey, the bay side down to the tip at Cape May – never been until now. Places I might have turned my nose up to in a previous life I am finding interesting and worthwhile at this date.

Enjoy the images. Tomorrow a tripod goes along.

 

 

 

 

Cape May Lighthouse, and thank you!