the trip down south

Last summer was a little bit magical in that I had a stretch of ten weekends in a row in Stone Harbor, starting the weekend after the Fourth of July and continuing well into September. Somehow, every one of those weekends, Friday would roll around and there wouldn't be a single thing that I needed to stay (too) late for or that required weekend work. And so I'd ride the A train up to Port Authority and then catch the late-evening NJ Transit bus number 319 down the Garden State Parkway, first to Toms River and then to Atlantic City (a city that's best from a distance, a horizon mirage from Stone Harbor or bright lights over marshlands, curving in on the expressway). South of Atlantic City, the bus winds along island roads, stopping in Ocean City and Sea Isle City before crossing the rusted, impossibly narrow bridge over Townsends Inlet and onto Seven Mile Island, where I'd get off at the corner of my street in the middle of the night and walk toward the wet-salt smell of the ocean.

I spent every Friday night for ten straight weeks on a bus last year, but here's a secret: I love that ride. Both going and coming, I love the looping entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, how it circles the Weehawken football stadium like a snake and rises up to reveal the Manhattan skyline from afar. I love the flat wide expanse of the Garden State, the views of suburbia down the roads that intersect with it, and the moments when the constant trees give way to water and bloody orange sunsets. I love cutting between the Garden State and the islands on causeways, water and marshland and houses on stilts, roadside diners and seafood stores. And at the end of the ride, the payoff: Stone Harbor, a weekend or longer on the shore. It can't be beat.