Hike #727; Cape May to Stone Harbor

 Hike #727; Cape May to Stone Harbor

9/29/13 Cape May to Stone Harbor with Brandan Jermyn, Conrad Blease, Teresa Montes, Jean Amon, Daniel Stone, and Jese Martin.

Wildwood Days!

For our next Perimeter of NJ series hike, and one of the last sections of barrier island beach left to do on the east side of the state, we would cover a section between Cape May and Stone Harbor, where we left off the previous time.

Brandan, Jese, Jeanie, Dan, Teresa, and I were the only ones in the lot when I arrived. For previous beach hikes, there had been a lot more people. I was rather surprised at the light attendance. Conrad decided to sleep in, and Teresa offered to drive us to Cape May, go back and get Conrad, and meet late. This was a huge help because we'd not have to shuttle any cars to the beginning!

Teresa dropped us off on the far side of the Cape May Canal bridge at the lower end of Garden State Parkway, at Spicers Creek boat access area. We started walking right from there, up over the bridge over Cape May Canal along Rt 109, and then turned right onto Ocean Drive. This was the only way through unfortunately, following this road.

We crossed bridges on this road over Skunk Sound and Mud Hen Gut, very unattractively named places, and then over the thorofare to Jarvis Sound.

On the other side of the bridge, there was access to Cape May National Wildlife Refuge lands, and so we went on down and followed the beach for a while. We had to jump over an inlet right from the start, and then had a nice beach walk, but then came to the private lands of the  US Coast Guard property. We opted not to try to pass through, and went back to the road, having to jump the inlet again once more.

We followed Ocean Drive again, and passed a giant sea captain statue at the Two Mile Landing sign. We posed for pictures with the sign, which had the fisherman's coat blowing forward as if he had an erection or something. Jese put her hand in his coat for a funny picture.

We passed some wetlands, which maps show as "Old Lower Thoroughfare" which I suppose means that this was once the main through channel. We made the next right onto the USCG entrance road, and followed it for a long time until we got to the first parking area on the right. The map showed two trails from here, but only one really existed. This is called the Two Mile Beach section of Cape May National Wildlife Refuge, and the trail we followed was a boardwalk dock. It led to a nice view into the estuaries.

We turned back, and then continued following the road to the refuge visitor's center. It was actually quite nice, with maps and restrooms. We took a break here, then headed out to the trail that leads through to Two Mile Beach. It was a nice one, heading through all of the dunes. There were two other hikers heading out from there as well.

When we got to the beach itself, I was mortified to see that it was closed from the access point to Diamond Beach. By this time, I really didn't want to go back again. I could see people were walking it, and no one was looking. We just opted to cross the wire and continue on through. When we got to the other side, Conrad and Teresa met up with us to continue.

We walked the beach for a long ways into Wildwood Crest, then to Wildwood, and left the beach when the boardwalk started. Jese kept on walking ahead, and we hollered at her to stop, but she didn't hear any of us. I eventually had to run after her to tell her we were turning.

I don't remember where we turned exactly, but Teresa knew about a really great Mexican restaurant somewhere in town. I wouldn't remember how to get there, but she got us there, and the food was outstanding of course. We had a nice sit down lunch, with friendly service, and Conrad and I had some Mexicokes, something that he introduced to me that I always have to have at these establishments now. Conrad, always the well versed expert in all things food, and particularly in cultural food, pointed out that coca cola from mexican establishments is made with real sugar, and therefore has a different taste, and it does.

After I finished with my food, Teresa gave me a dancing lesson in the restaurant, which must have been humorous to onlookers. There weren't many because the sit down eating section was sort of hidden in the back, the rest was like a grocery store.

Teresa got us back to the boardwalk where we left off, because I wanted to make sure to cover the whole perimeter of the state. We continued down the boardwalk and out of Wildwood, then back to some more beach. We returned to the sea wall area at 2nd Street, and made our way along  Hereford Inlet Park.

This was one of my favorite sea wall sections in the entire state to walk. It was not crowded, nor was it developed like a "trail". It had no guard rails, but rather a concrete pad atop the rocks. It made turns back and forth along the edge of the Hereford Inlet, and it just seemed to keep going on and on. The public walkway section seemed to end at Oak Avenue Park.

From here, we went beyond and walked on the flat but rocky top of the sea wall near to apartment complex buildings. Despite private property signs, we continued along until we got to long apartment buildings that were pointed away from the inlet. We followed the sidewalks between the buildings and out to the development streets, which we followed out to Rt 147 and the Beach Creek Bridge. Jese was getting really tired, and she wanted to get back home to feed her dogs, not realizing it would take quite this long to do this hike.

Conrad and Brandan both carried her between them for a while near the bridge, then she switched to just being carried by Brandan.

We turned right on Rt 619 past Grassy Sound, and crossed the Grassy Sound Bridge onto Nummy Island. We then crossed the Stone Harbor Bridge. We could see a giant mount island out in the water, which had "STONE HARBOR" written on it like the Hollywood sign in California, though this one was shabby looking. Conrad and Teresa told us that this was some sort of project to bring sand or something to the shore, but that it was contaminated, so they dumped it all out there. They can probably elaborate on it more.

The sun was going down along the inter coastal waterway beautifully, and we turned right after the bridge onto 3rd Avenue in Stone Harbor. There was an access to the waterfront beyond, but nothing I could walk through with the tide higher. We turned left on 122nd St, then onto Second Avenue to the parking lot.

The one last thing I wanted to do was walk out the peninsula on the south side, have a look at the observation deck, and take a swim. Only Teresa, Jeannie, and I went out there, and of course I was the only one to jump in for a swim. The water still wasn't too cold, though I was cold when I got out. The sun was just setting, and it was a beautiful place to be for it, as I suspected it would be.

I suppose a poor weather forecast scared away a lot of the group who had initially signed up. There were quite a lot signed up through my Meetup groups, but in the end only Dan and I were RSVP'd through that. It's actually nice to share a hike with a smaller group sometimes, and this time was just right. Had we been a large group, we'd not have been able to have the amazing Mexican lunch, and we'd have had to figure out more complicated parking at the beginning. Somehow, it always seems like things work out.

Although the Summer was over, this felt like just another Summer day, like there would be no end to it.