Yoo 323 - The New Jersey Story

Happening on the EASST adventure over a year ago now (with the alishafriend), this is the story of New Jersey. Or rather, the story of the most difficult state we've acquired to date.

The first thing to note about New Jersey is, it's expensive to get out of. All the bridges into New Jersey our free. But leaving New Jersey?

That's going to cost you.

Over $20 in our case.

We did accidentally end up on roads that forced us onto bridges during rush hour traffic a couple times...clearly we didn't know where we were going. And New Jersey milked us for it.

Not a good first, second, and third impression.

Our first foray into New Jersey got us this:

A state sign over a bridge. Less effective! Now, we'll pull over in less-than-ideal conditions to grab the pictures, but bridges are kind of an unspoken "No Go". Life value slightly higher than state sign quest.

Bitter that we'd failed on the first attempt (and lost over $20), we were determined to find a New Jersey state sign NOT over a bridge.

One wrong turn and another $4 later, we'd found it. And during the last few hours of EASST too!

The only problem was that it was in the middle of the convergence of several freeways leading onto, you guessed it, a bridge.

I won't detail exactly what we did but, sufficeth me to say, it probably wasn't legal and it definitely was not the safest thing we've ever done.

Ok, I'll give you the short of it:  abandoned parking lot, sketchy part of town (though i'm convinced everywhere in new jersey is sketchy...), and several mad dashes with camera equipment.

Standard pose.

Failed jumping pose.

An attempt to human-letter the state abbreviation.

"Hey Kyoo, which way does J face?"

*dork stamp* 

Apparently I can't process that on the fly!

Go Kyoo.

While these weren't our best pictures ever, they were still pictures with an actual state sign and we were satisfied. Also, remember the area was sketchy.

More mad dashing, praises of gratitude that the rental car (tanger prime) was still intact, and we were ready to go.

Wait, no we weren't. We decided we were hot, so we took our pants off in this abandoned parking lot (shorts underneath, let's not get scandalous here) and then we were ready to go.

I debated relaying the whole story of what happened as we were trying to leave New Jersey, but it's really more scary than it is funny and I don't feel like detailing it online! We learned a valuable lesson that day about how desperate some people are though. And I got a stern talking to from the Gregbeau and probably the Kyoo mom too about taking unnecessary risks.

(but we really needed that state sign!)

I kind of hate to say this but thru it all, I developed less-than-fond feelings for New Jersey! Shortly after the escapade we found out that Camden, NJ (we realized later that that's where we were...) is one of the most dangerous cities in the US. And let's not forget how easy it is to get into New Jersey but how expensive it is to leave! And most of their state signs are on bridges which is so inconvenient. If you know of any redeeming qualities about New Jersey, do share because I can list zero. New Jersey is not favorite!

The Campbell Soup Company headquartered there might lend to a more favorable impression...if I was in love with their soups. But I'm a store band kind of girl when it comes to soup.

In other news, I am pleased to report I have finished filing my taxes like an honorable citizen. And I was 99.9% sure that I was going to owe money this year, but TurboTax worked it's magic and I ended up with a small return. Can't hate that!

Have a great day :-)