Wildwood, NJ and Stone Harbor NJ- Our Last Day

Today was our last day here in the Wildwood area, and I think it turned out to be my favorite of our days here. As some of you may already know, I home school one of my children and so I wanted to do something fun and educational on this trip with them. We learned of the Wetlands Institute before we left located in Stone Harbor, NJ just a short 20 min. drive away. They teach wildlife conservation and have this great animals of the wetlands educational program there.

One of the fun things they have for kids is a turtle room that gives lots of fun facts about the Terrapin Turtles found on the island. They deliver the information in a fun and hands on way.

They also had a small aquarium filled with some of the smaller ocean creatures you might see around the island. The boys really enjoyed the little octopus they had there and the touch tank which contained hermit crabs, horseshoe crabs, star fish, sea urchins, spider crabs and a flounder.

After the aquarium we took a self guided tour of the salt marsh outside the Institute. Throughout the year the tour is guided by a Dosen, an expert in the marshes, but we arrived one week to late for their last guided tour. We were however given a very detailed booklet with map and lots of helpful information to walk along the trail. Outside there were two paths you could choose to take, one was a straight dry trail, that was covered with a layer of crushed sea shells.

Or for a more submerged experience, step off the beaten path and walk a trail covered with bent reads at the waters edge. Be warned this route is muddy, but as long as you carefully plan each step, I was able to navigate with out much damage to my new sneakers. Luckily the high and dry road is just a step or two to your left so you can jump back on it at any time.

At the end of the tour we found a boardwalk that extended out over the marsh and gave you an opportunity to see dozens of small fiddler crabs.

At the very end of the trail the kids stopped to dip their feet in the cool marsh.

On the way out we stopped to enjoy their butterfly gardens.

I am so glad that we went the the Wetlands Institute, not just because it was a fun day trip, but because if we hadn't we would never have discovered Stone Harbor. I have to say I have just fallen in love with this island. Stone Harbor is just the next island over you can get to it by getting onto New Jersey Ave. towards North Wildwood. And then following the signs to Stone Harbor, there is a small toll of $1.50 one way to use one of the 2 bridges you will cross to island hop from North Wildwood to Stone Harbor.

I've discovered I love this island better than Wildwood and when we come back again, I'm going to try and stay here. They have their own beach that stretches the island, which I believe is about 7 miles long from Stone Harbor to Avalon. It is nice little beach that has a very exclusive feel to it, it was not crowded at all.

The island is filled with these beautiful homes, all ranging from charming cottages to large grand beach houses. They are all beautiful and make you feel like your on Martha's Vineyard or some other exclusive island. We picked up a few real estate magazines at a Wawa and discovered that probably all of the ones we liked the best were at least $1M., but fortunately a great deal of them are rented out so you don't have to be a millionaire to live like one for a week.

At the center of Stone Harbor is their shopping district. The streets are lined with all kinds of shops, and the best part is their not all those high end over priced designer shops either. As a matter of fact all the shops I noticed I had never heard of before, they were all new to me and that made them all the better. It made the whole place feel like a small intimate town. While walking around the square I counted 3 ice cream parlors, four Christmas shops, two of which also had handmade or vintage looking Halloween items. There were 3 miniature golf courses on the roof tops of some of the other shops.

They had small coffee shops, bookstore, a 5 & 10cent toy store, which I don't know why they call it that, there weren't any 5 or 10 cent items in there, let alone toys, it was actually filled with an assortment of home decor and other wonderful beachy items as well. There were lots of unique boutiques and jewelry stores, even a cute little pet shop filled with wonderful little things you could buy for your pet.

I can't even cover all the types of little shops they had, I am so impressed with this place it's very family friendly. They were even starting to decorate things for fall, the street lamps had corn husks and hay bails around them. Little mums and pumpkins lined the streets. Due to the amount of holiday themed stores, I imagine their over compensating for it, because it must be kind of hard to experience all the things you associate with fall, thanksgiving, or Christmas on an island. I live in PA so fall for us is all about, visiting an orchard, picking fresh apples and pumpkins to bake into apple and pumpkin pies, choosing a carving pumpkin for a jack-o-lantern, hay rides and corn maizes. I imagine living in a coastal region makes allot of these things impossible to come by, it's just not the same feeling. But when it comes to summer living here I bet you just can't beat it. 

We drove the length of the island after visiting the beach up to Avalon were we found our hands down favorite, and the largest of all the homes we saw, this beauty. I imagine this is way above $1M. This one was so beautiful, it reminds me of a castle. Ah, from now on when ever I picture my dream home, it will look just like this.

After our champagne wishes and caviar dreams, we found a great pirate themed miniature golf place in Avalon and had to stop. My kids love pirates and so do I, we had been looking for a good miniature golf spot all week. One that didn't look like it was just slapped up for the tourists. This was very nice, they really put allot of detail into the course, and they played great caribbean themed music, I felt like I was in Florida. This course was so much fun, they used every bit of space on the lot they had. 

Several of the courses were inside a grotto, where there was a pirate skeleton locked behind bars guarding his treasure.

Korbin really enjoyed all the water around the courses. He loves getting wet.

The courses then continue up on top of the caves for a really nice view.

We made our way across a rickety pirate bridge..

And down to the sunken pirate ship that was the last course.

We even got a chance to try and win a free game for next time. My husband won the free game, which we will be saving till we come back next time. Today, by the way, was my husband's birthday, so I guess it was birthday luck.

We snapped some sunset pictures of the wetlands, as we island hopped back to our condo in Wildwood. This place is so beautiful I can't wait to come back.

Thanks for stopping by. Nicole

Wildwood, NJ Days 3 &4 - Beach Daze

Wow, I am beached out already. We've spent the past 2 days on the beach and boardwalk or in the pool. The weather has been perfect over the past 2 days, in the 80's with this wonderfully cool ocean breeze so you never get hot. I could spend all day here just sitting watching the waves and enjoying that breeze.

Yesterday we enjoyed the beach right in front of the condo we are staying in on Magnolia Ave. We're only a block and a half from the boardwalk which is great, you can walk out the front door and be there in about 60 seconds. The drawback is that the beach is so far away from the boardwalk here. It's like crossing a dessert to reach it, our first day out it felt like a mirage, you could see it in the distance, but it felt like no matter how far you walked you were never going to reach it.

So today we tried driving further down the island past where the boardwalk ends and all the hotels are beach front. We parked on Rambler Rd. around the 7100 block where it was a much shorter walk to the water, plus there was a nice wooden walkway that stretched more than halfway down.

There we found a large warm tidal pool, with a few schools of minnows swimming through that had gotten stuck there at low tide. The boys found some nice shells and a hermit crab in there.

While strolling on the beach, I noticed these cute little birds, that would wank around the wet sand looking for anything the waives may have washed ashore, but then scurry out of the way of on coming waives.

The beaches here are very clean and it's a great family friendly atmosphere. There were also several dogs on the beach today, we watched a lab enjoy dashing into the waves to get his ball. It was quite entertaining for the kids to watch. We saw lots of families with young children especially here, I haven't notices as many school aged kids since it's the beginning of the school year. That is what makes it particularly nice, because the beaches and the boardwalk are not crowded. It's like living in a quiet little beach town, when we get in the car to just drive around the island and site see, we would be only one of like 5 cars on the road (with in eye site). The speed limit here is 25mph so you can take your time while driving along Ocean Ave. it's like taking a leisurely Sunday drive to no where in particular. They have several very nice playgrounds on the island between Ocean and Atlantic Ave. we stopped to let the kids play at two of them.

The kids built their first official sand castles today. We call them official because building a sand castle in a playground sandbox and on an actually beach are two totally different experiences.

After an afternoon at the beach, we went for lunch on the boardwalk and then walked all the way to the north end where the beach begins to have some really nice sand dunes. We took some family photos here before returning to our condo.

Down at the Jersey Shore Wildwood NJ Day1

Greetings every one from Wildwood, NJ. Today is day number one of our family vacation. We made it here after driving 4 hours from Harrisburg, PA. My kids went in the ocean today for the first time. I was so happy to be able to get them here after years of planning to take them to the beach.

When Paul and I got married we took our honeymoon down in Atlantic city, worst idea ever. It was mid march, so it was windy and freezing, you couldn't go in the water, and most of the boardwalk was not yet open for the season. The only thing to do was go into the casinos, which are open all year round, but if you have kids you can't do that either. I didn't miss out on anything though, I don't gamble and it wouldn't have interested me, but it was annoying being stopped by casino security and being redirected every where we tried to go inside one. My eldest was 2 and my youngest 6mo. at the time so they didn't remember anything about it. So this trip is their first official time at the beach.

The weather down here is very cool today, but not cold. It's about 70 degrees with clear skies, and the boardwalk surprisingly is not overly crowded. It's the last day of biker week, the noise is unbelievable. One the way in there were bikers every where, I've never seen so many, or heard so many, it's like a being surrounded by pack of roaring lions. We rented this huge mini-van, a Chrysler Town and Country, it was my first time driving one, so I was afraid I would run over these guys on their bikes if I wasn't careful, but thankfully there was no incidents.

The place we are staying in is actually quite nice, we rented a condo just 1.5 blocks from the boardwalk. The walls are painted with bright colors, and I love bright colors. The dinning/living room is banana yellow and the kitchen is sherbet makes me feel like I'm in Florida instead of NJ. We even have a pool table, which the kids are taking full advantage of. Some of the down sides are that allot of the other condos are rented to bikers, which is not a bad thing, but the condo has it's own parking grauge on the first floor of the building for all the renters, and when the bikers start their rides us it shakes the whole floor like a mini earthquake. In fact that's what I though it was the first time I felt it, took me awhile to figure out what it really was.

After the kids played in the ocean, we ate at a pizza place on the boardwalk, were the slices were huge, twice the size of the ones back home, I'm not kidding. Then we played some arcade games and my sister and Tyler joined forces to complete this game where you play a thief and have to make your way through a laser maze. The object was to make it down this dark hallway of green lasers with out touching any and beat the clock, like a high security system in a museum. It wasn't really worth the $6 per person price, since it only lasted under 2 minutes to complete.

I'm missing all our pets though, we had to leave all of our Pomeranians with friend's and family. We had a mini scare this morning, when we received a phone call from a YWCA saying they had our dog Bu. Apparently he had run away from our friend whens he took him to the park, they spent the whole night looking for him. I'm glad to say he was safely returned to our friend, who was so nice enough to watch him for us. I hope he doesn't give her too much more trouble, we are glad everything worked out.

We are looking forward to the rest of our week here and I hope I'll have more to share tomorrow. And while we are away we are running a giveaway of a pair of really nice earrings for the fall. You can find the details in our previous posting, which should appear below this one. Our giveaway is being hosted by our friends at The Hand Me Down House, while we are away, so visit their blog http://thehandmedownhouse.blogspot.com/ for details on how to enter this fabous give away.