*** While we're all quarantined under Stay-At-Home orders in the northeast, I thought you might enjoy a virtual trip to every county in New Jersey. Boyfriend and I did this back in 2017, and I never got around to posting about it. I hope you enjoy! ***
Road Trip!
You know what state is pretty cool? New Jersey. It gets a bad name, but it's a cool place. There are mountains, beaches, cities, swamps, forests, trains, and other cool stuff. Like beer and live music!
But is New Jersey even truly one place? I’d argue it is not. There’s the North Jersey vs South Jersey debate; and don’t forget to throw Central Jersey (I can confirm that it does indeed exist – I lived there) into the mix. New York City vs Philadelphia. Hoagies vs Subs. Pinelands and Skylands. City and Shore. For a tiny state, it has a lot of variety… and only 21 counties!
You know what would be a fun road trip? Visiting every county in NJ in one day. And better yet, let's visit the County Seat of every county in one day!
The Plan
Google Maps isn't up for this sort of routing, so I used MapQuest. Though the site is pretty slow and full of ads, it's easy to use and has some great features. I typed in the name of every County Seat as a destination, told it to work its magic, and here is the result:
According to MapQuest’s routing trip planner, our mission should take just under 11 hours (10:25, but we also had 15-20 mins to/from home on the 1st and last stops). We planned to do the following in each county:
- Take a selfie.
- Check in on FourSquare/Swarm, including the selfie. Cross-post to Facebook.
- Take a “real photo” of the town/surroundings.
- Nothing else... no time to waste!
As you’ll soon see, we had to stretch the meaning of “a single day”… But here’s the breakdown for each place!
1. New Brunswick, Middlesex County
Arrival time: 11:45 AM
Starting our journey!
2. Trenton, Mercer County
Arrival time: 12:42 PM
The state capital!
3. Mount Holly, Burlington County
Arrival time: 1:15 PM
I didn’t know much about Mount Holly, other than the fact that my weather forecast comes from there. It looked like a nice town!
4. Camden, Camden County
Arrival time: 2:02 PM
Camden’s picture is *of* Philly, but taken *in* Camden.
5. Woodbury, Gloucester County
Arrival time: 2:45 PM
Another town that looked pretty interesting!
6. Salem, Salem County
Arrival time: 3:40 PM
Salem gets two pics because I loooved their library!
7. Bridgeton, Cumberland County
Arrival time: 4:15 PM
Bridgeton had a really cool mural in their downtown park. Here’s an excerpt from NJ.com:
“The mural here features the area’s agricultural history and ethnic diversity against landmarks like the courthouse. Lake Street’s “Seven Gables” home is pictured toward the top of the mural. Built in 1871, the building had been a boarding school for girls, a maternity hospital and is now John Moriarty’s house.” More info here: https://www.nj.com/cumberland/2011/10/bridgetons_downtown_mural_park.html
8. Cape May Courthouse, Cape May County
Arrival time: 5:30 PM
The driving time from Bridgeton to Mays Landing was 41 minutes. Add Cape May Courthouse in there? 1hr 30mins. Cape May County is so far south!!
9. Mays Landing, Atlantic County
Arrival time: 6:19 PM
So much driving.
10. Toms River, Ocean County
Arrival time: 7:45 PM
A quick stop in Toms River while some fierce storm clouds formed overhead…
11. Freehold, Monmouth County
Arrival time: 8:15 PM
I didn’t realize Freehold had a downtown. I’ve driven around the area before, but always in the township. I’ll have to go back and spend more time.
12. Elizabeth, Union County
Arrival time: 9:05 PM
Last county seat with any daylight. Blue hour is perfect for photos!
13. Newark, Essex County
Arrival time: 9:30 PM
Is there a better spot for a photo than Newark Penn Station? Probably not - trains are great!
14. Jersey City, Hudson County
Arrival time: 10:00 PM
Jersey City was really busy! My photo includes a line of taxis.
15. Hackensack, Bergen County
Arrival time: 10:30 PM
Another first! I’ve been in this area before, but never actually visited Hackensack. Thwarted by an unexpected one-way street, we ended up taking the photo in a park across from the county building.
16. Paterson, Passaic County
Arrival time: 10:59 PM
If it was daytime, we would’ve gone to Paterson Great Falls. But it was nighttime, and we weren’t sure if it would be open and/or well-lit enough for the selfie. I scouted potential locations while boyfriend drove, and came across the county building’s annex. WOW! It was built in 1899 as a US Post Office. The second picture is the current county building.
17. Morristown, Morris County
Arrival time: 11:50 PM
I’ve spent some time in Morristown, but couldn’t pick a spot for a photo. Ended up on the Green!
18. Newton, Sussex County
Arrival time: 12:45 AM
Poor photo quality because I was really tired.
O.M.G. is it bedtime yet? Ok, guys. This is where we called it. We still had 3 county seats (2.5+ hours of driving) and it was 1am. Just think of the blurry selfies. We drove home (an HOUR from Newton), slept for ~6 hours, and got back on the road with enough time to make it to the remaining 3 county seats in under 24 hours. Still “a single day” in my book.
19. Belvidere, Warren County
Arrival time: 9:48 AM
Back at it! Did you know that Belvidere is home of the “County Seaters”? The tiny downtown was pretty busy on Sunday morning! Fun fact: the guy who founded Scranton, PA was from Belvidere.
20. Flemington, Hunterdon County
Arrival time: 10:40 AM
Let’s be real. For #20 I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired, and we just took the photo where we ended up parking. As luck* would have it, we ended up parking across from the Union Hotel. This is a really cool building from the early 1800s that was recently slated for demolition (developers wanted to reuse the land), but the community pushed back. The result was a compromise: the developers will use the façade of the hotel in their new development.
*Because we targeted downtown areas in every county seat.
21. Somerville, Somerset County
Arrival time: 11:15 AM
Our last county seat, and it’s one of my favorites. We made it! To celebrate, we stopped for a real meal at Boulevard Seafood.
The Results
We did it! Every county in NJ within 24 hours. Total time: 16 hours** (13:30 + 2:30). Woohoo!
Lessons learned?
- MapQuest’s route planner/optimizer is great! As long as you can put up with ads.
- Do your math. We ended up spending ~15 minutes in each place (find parking and/or photo location, take photo, post photo, get directions to the next place, and get back on the road), plus we had a few (3?) bathroom/food/gas stops. As it turns out, spending 15 minutes at 21 places would add over 5 hours to our trip. Factoring that in, we made pretty good time. If we had calculated that in advance, we would’ve had a more realistic estimate (and maybe started earlier in the day… I’m not a morning person).
- Have a plan for the bigger cities. Showing up in Jersey City at 10 PM on a Saturday night without a plan of where we wanted to take a photo proved to be stressful. At that point, we were also nearing 12 hours in the car. I thought I wanted to do the photo in Journal Square, but I *really* wanted to do the photo in a square near Grove Street. Make a plan!
- Wawa and QuickChek are the. best. We stopped at numerous Wawas and QuickCheks for gas, reliably fast and decent food, and reliably clean bathrooms.
**This does not include the hour we drove home from Newton or the hour from home to Belvidere… the fact that we needed sleep was purely due to poor planning. If someone else were to attempt this trip, those 2 extra hours wouldn’t be necessary.
My full set of photos is available here: https://flickr.com/photos/robotbrainz/albums/72157702834191012. Most are included in this blog post, but there are a few extras there.
