The Abbreviated Trip to Long Beach Island

This year I knew my annual trip to LBI would be different, since I don’t have PTO benefits where I work, and I had already taken some hours off here and there for my ongoing dental work.  I didn’t usually spend more than a few nights at the shore anyway, but even if I did spend the whole week there, it would be a small sacrifice when it comes to working.  This year’s trip to LBI was a day trip, which I didn’t mind.  I was glad to make the journey to the island, and I had taken day trips there before.

And as I wrote previously, I like the ride to and from the island almost as much as I like spending time at LBI itself.  Once I get past the Burlington and Mt. Holly areas in New Jersey, the rest of the trip is mostly woodlands.  After I get past the Four Mile Circle near Pemberton, the landscape becomes dominated by the famous Atlantic Pygmy Pines that this area of New Jersey is famous for.  It’s not a particularly long stretch, maybe 15-20 miles between the circle and Manahawkin, where route 72 meets the Garden State Parkway, and where the large development known as Ocean Acres is located.  As I make my way through Manahawkin, the road is once again surrounded by the houses and shopping centers that I am familiar with.

This year as I was approaching Manahawkin I noticed something different about the landscape.  It seemed that many of the pine and oak trees were bare and dying.  It may have been the result of the forest fires that are part of the nature cycle there, but to me the trees didn’t look burnt.  It looked to me like the trees were dying a natural death, like there was some kind of disease that had infested them.  I’m not a scientist and I don’t know much about these things, however.  I guess I’ll look up what happened, and see if I could find anything. 

Once I got to the island, I only visited a few places.  There are a lot of places I try to see every time I visit LBI, but this year my time was limited, and I just hit a few spots around Beach Haven, where we stay.  Of course, I wanted to see the ocean, which I captured in the above photo.  If I remember right, it was around 5 or 6 in the evening.  I had taken pictures from that spot before, around that same time in the late afternoon/early evening, but something looked different about the sky this time.  I guess it was the arrangement of the clouds hanging over the ocean.

After having dinner, it was time to leave and head back home.  I wanted to get at least most of the way home before darkness fell, but I was way behind.  The sun was setting behind the tree line across the bay as I was making my way up the main boulevard toward route 72 in Ship Bottom, which carries the only bridge connection to the mainland.  It was getting darker as I made my way through the Pine Barrens, and night had fallen by the time I reached the Four Mile Circle.  By the time I crossed the Burlington Bristol Bridge to Bucks County and got home, it was getting late.