And a beautiful beach at that.
Island Beach State Park is technically part of the Jersey Shore (it's just south of Seaside Heights, which is where they film the show), but because it's a state park, the entire beach is pristine and uncrowded. No guidos here!
I'm lucky enough to be friends of a friend with a car. Jeep owner Jon drove Brian, Paul, Charlie and I the hour and a half to the beach. We left at about 3:30 am on Sunday morning! We wanted to miss the Jersey Shore traffic, along with catch the sunrise over the Atlantic.
We drove from the city, south through Brooklyn, across the Verrazano Bridge into Staten Island, across SI and into Jersey, through Tom's River and out onto the Jersey Shore! We drove through the State Park, stopped, deflated the tires and headed out onto the sand!
Apparently you can drive along the sand to your heart's content, as long as you've got fishing poles on you. We drove a few miles down the sand, past a few sleepy fisherman and picked a nice spot all to ourselves. All we had to do was open the car doors and unload our stuff out right there! It was great, no lugging heavy coolers and chairs miles across hot sand. We cast a line into the ocean, stuck our fishing pole in the sand and were good to go.
Waiting for the sun to come up.
Getting lighter.
Beautiful beach.
Almost there!
Sunrise!!!
So pretty!
About 5:45 am.
It was weird watching the sun RISE over the ocean instead of set into it! I can't decide which I like better. I think I may have burned my retinas a bit watching the sunrise, but it was incredibly beautiful.
After we watched the sunrise, we all promptly passed out on the sand. I woke up around 9 am to put on sunscreen and splash around in the Atlantic, which was surprisingly warm! Waaaay warmer than the Pacific! The water was crystal clear and beautifully blue and green.
The fishing pole set up!
We spent the whole day at the beach, skim boarding, boogie boarding and swimming. The waves don't look big, but were pretty powerful for their size. I swam out past the breakers and could still see the bottom clearly - visibility was at least 8 or 9 feet! While out there I spotted several fish, along with felt myself being hit with hundreds of tiny things...I managed to scoop one up and discovered it to be a tiny little jelly thing with a small blackish brown speck in the middle. I figured it was some weird plankton, but determined later that it was actually a fish egg! There had to have been thousands of them out there! I probably swallowed a few on accident. Ew.
Jon had also brought a mask and net, which I used to pick up a small dead crab off the sea-floor. Fishing bait!
And Bret - there were surfers out there, but they were a bit laughable. A few shortboarders managed to catch some very short rides. There was one longboarder, who I didn't see catch a single wave. Even boogie boarding wasn't great on these waves, they were just too quick to break, and crashed all over the place. It was perfect conditions for skim boarding though!
And Bret - there were surfers out there, but they were a bit laughable. A few shortboarders managed to catch some very short rides. There was one longboarder, who I didn't see catch a single wave. Even boogie boarding wasn't great on these waves, they were just too quick to break, and crashed all over the place. It was perfect conditions for skim boarding though!
Such a beautiful beach.
(You can see the cars parked on the sand in this picture!)
(You can see the cars parked on the sand in this picture!)
We left the beach about 5 pm, which was perfect because we didn't hit too much traffic on the way back. I was definitely a bit sunburned but it was well worth it! I hadn't been able to swim in the ocean in far too long, and it was nice to float around in the Atlantic for a day.
Hopefully we can make it back to the State Park again this summer!
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