When I went to the beach in New Jersey over the last 13 or
14 years I usually went to Ocean Grove, the shore town just south to Asbury
Park that’s about the nearest spot on the shore to where my parents live and
also the town my father liked to go to because it was where he went as a child
when his family went to the beach . Armed with my annual National Park Pass, I
thought I’d try something different. Sandy Hook is the northernmost part of the
Jersey Shore, a sand bar that juts north toward New York City that is part of
Gateway National Recreation Area, a number of parks around New York Harbor in
New York and New Jersey that are together managed as a single park system unit.


Sandy Hook just has beaches and natural areas, no honky-tonk
towns with Snooki and The Situation wannabes engaged in juvenile mayhem. Within
Sandy Hook there is a defunct U.S. Army post named Fort Hancock and a
lighthouse that can be visited, but mostly it’s just about the beach.

Altogether my East Coast road trip took me about six weeks with
eleven days on the way east, five on the way west and almost four weeks at my
parents’ house in New Jersey helping them out, preparing meals and freezing
food for them to eat later, and generally looking after them in their declining
state of health. My trip back to Denver was a more direct one, with a one day
stop in Chicago to see some friends but no notable touring.