#wildwood nj

[head-vampire]

Castle Dracula (1978) Brochure

Wildwood, NJ

Source

[alex51324]

Beach Report! Part 1

OK, so this was a trip to Wildwood & Cape May, New Jersey, in late October of 2024.

We drove down on Friday, arriving at the shore about two-ish. We stopped at a place called Hereford Inlet for our first look at the ocean!

Here it is!

We walked over to the Hereford Lighthouse where they have these old lifeboats for kids to climb on:

And confirmed that, as I suspected, Sophie would not be participating in any boat-based excursions:

This was as far as she would come into the boat that was sitting on completely dry land and had the side cut down to be easy to get into.

The little lighthouse/museum was closed, but we walked around a bit:

The we walked on the beach! I found this mysterious object:

Which it turns out is a whelk egg casing.

It was low tide so the beach was very broad and had huge tidepools; here we are standing with our back to the ocean looking at a big tidepool:

This is where Sophie made the discovery that sometimes water here is salty.

Onward!

Here's where I walked out onto a jetty and got splashed with water:

Then the motel! It's a very old-school boardwalk-adjacent motel, which the proprietors were trying to make look fancier than it is.

The ramp there leads up to the boardwalk, and you can walk under it to get to the beach.

We were in the cheapest rooms they have, which are in a little building in the back:

They originally gave us one on the top floor, but Sophie thought the stairs were scary, so I asked to switch to a ground-floor one.

The room was pretty nice--very clean, some nice details--but tiny. We're standing in the doorway here; that's what the blue vertical lines on either side are.

You get a microwave and minifridge there in the unit under the TV, though.

But the bathroom...

I guess they picked that sink thinking it would be an updated, modern look, but it does not fit in this space--I am not a large person, and I had to turn sideways to fit through this gap. A normal pedestal sink would work a lot better.

Anyway, I see why people who are paying high-season prices for this place are a little less-than-completely satisfied. But for an off-season bargain at one of the few boardwalk hotels that takes dogs, I thought it was pretty good.

Anyway, let's go under the boardwalk and to the beach!

The ocean is very big:

Other boardwalk hotels, most of them shut for the season:

To one side of the hotel there is a roller coaster and go-kart track--also shut:

To the other side is a place called Seaport Pier, which is a restaurant and nightclub with live music, and under the motel is a video arcade--fortunately, all shut. I don't think I'd have much fancied this location in the season, but it was peaceful in October--not to mention unseasonably warm--and I kind of liked getting the retro-kitsch vibe without the noise. (I took a bunch of vaguely arty shots of the roller coaster; you'll be seeing it again.)

We left the beach through a different boardwalk underpass and went back to the motel on the surface streets; here we saw some giraffes at a (shut) mini-golf place:

Most of the neighborhood around the motel was these townhouse/duplex things, that were all almost identical, and weirdly massive. I guess they probably had four units in each, I don't know. That's one of them behind the little yellow hut there. For several blocks, everything that wasn't a tourist-oriented business was one of those.

We left the motel to go to a place called Sunset Beach, where you can watch the sunset over the Delaware Bay. It's not everywhere that you can see the sunset over the waters of the Atlantic Ocean on the US side, so that's neat!

The object out there is the concrete ship Atlantus, which has been gradually falling apart out there for almost a hundred years.

This was one of my favorite activities of the weekend; the weather was absolutely gorgeous, and there were just enough people--a few dozen, spread out over the whole beach--to make it feel like a communal experience.

Sophie liked the beach and meeting people, but she was a little wary of the ocean itself. Here is photo evidence of her being very brave:

The sun continues to set:

There it goes!

The colors were even better than this in person; my phone camera is not great for this sort of thing.

After the sunset I poked around a couple of little gift shops near there, and then took advantage of certain ways in which the laws of New Jersey differ from those of my home state:

Luckily, I had the motel's rooftop deck to myself:

Coming back down from the deck, I spent a while trying to decide if this splotch of paint is intentionally supposed to look like a jellyfish-or-something:

Never quite came to a conclusion. There was another splotch that looked like it was maybe supposed to be a seashell but had mostly worn away, and then two others that were clearly just splotches. It's a mystery!

So that wrapped up the first night of Beach Vacation 2024.

[macwantspeace]

"Largest crowd, ever!! No questions." - Sean Spicer From the article: "Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told Newsweek on Sunday that "over 100,000 people patriots" had shown up to hear Trump speak.

While it's not clear exactly how many attended the rally, Wildwood's Republican mayor, Ernie Troiano Jr., earlier said that the beach could accommodate only about 20,000 people and that about that many tickets had been requested for the rally.

Aliya Schneider, a reporter with The Philadelphia Inquirer, posted videos showing some attendees leaving the rally while Trump was still speaking. "Trump is still speaking, but the crowd has been thinning. People have been walking out back to the boardwalk," Schneider wrote in one post." Embedded in the article is a Xit with video of "35 unedited minutes of people walking out".

[phantomladyoverparis]

Wildwood, NJ (1994), dir. Ruth Leitman & Carol Weaks Cassidy    

[silassstingy]

continuing on with my day.... look at some of the pretty motel/hotel signs we took pictures of last night!!! 😍😍😍

[doo-wop-city]

Diplomat Suites

Take a look at The Diplomat Suites, right in the middle of Wildwood!

Diplomat Suites is hard to describe, but we will. It is a five-story brutalist monolith protected by concrete walls. These photos were taken on September 8th, 1967. (…Or, was that 2023?) Located between Pine and Wildwood Avenues to the north and south, respectively, and midway on the block between Atlantic and Pacific Avenues to the East and west, respectively, The Diplomat’s parking lots span…

[mikewebkist]

Wildwood, NJ.

[shiningwizard]

Wildwood, NJ (Ruth Leitman & Carol Weaks Cassidy, 1994)

I thought this was going to be more of a mondo look at American seaside culture, but get girls freely and openly talking to girls about themselves, their bodies, relationships, work, sex and fighting and you've got something pretty wonderful and something able to transmit far beyond a locked nostalgia curiosity. Excellent accents and hair throughout. Fell in love multiple times.

[saddlebums]

Taking It To The Beach Competing with the youngest rider on the oldest bike at TROG It was all there. Shoulder-to-shoulder ratted-out and pristine cars and motorcycles; lots of interesting hats and tatts; perfectly coiffed guys in greasy overalls; organized chaos. Only Wildwood -- the Doo-Whop capital of the U.S. of A. goddamnit! -- could host something like this. Waves of iron up against the waves; packed grandstands with thousands cheering (mostly) on the riders and drivers as they motor down the (approximately) eighth-mile stretch of sand; the Wall-Of Death! (only the barkers weren't allowed call it that -- insurance restrictions or truth in advertising?)

[sleepingintheflowers]

[lilyhana]

I learned in my NJ visits that Jersey folks go DOWN THE SHORE. I also tried a pizza cone in Wildwood. I still rank a Sicilian pizza at the top (so filling!) but I haven’t really met a pizza I didn’t enjoy.

I could go for a hot slice today. And a beach.

[head-vampire]

Castle Dracula (1989)

Wildwood, NJ

Photography by Alan Shoesmith

Source

[gwydionmisha]

It was walk through and every bit of cool as you are likely imagining.  (There was a boring lover’s lane boat ride underneath, but the castle itself was excellent)  Mostly actors in sets.  Beautifully old school.  We were so excited the year they built it.  It was the most expensive ride on the boardwalk at the time.  We’d go a bunch of times every year despite the expense.  Eventually, some of my cousins would work there for a summer job.

I would have killed to ride the castle dracula ride in wildwood nj

[phantomladyoverparis]

Wildwood, NJ (1994), dir. Ruth Leitman & Carol Weaks Cassidy  

[silassstingy]

okay continuing on with my day... look at the pretty motel/hotel signs we took pictures of last night 😍😍😍

[doo-wop-city]

Doo Wop City Mural Art In Progress

This is the 396th Doo Wop City post. We’re only 4 posts away from the Doo Wop City 400th Post Spectacular! Be sure not to miss it! Doo Wop City is perpetually undergoing a beautification process, as the town gets increasingly gorgeous with each new dawn. While strolling along the roadways by Splash Zone water park, we encountered a friendly local artist, Michelle, painting cheerfully festive…