On 1/31, I went to the Golden Nugget farewell ceremony in Wildwood. However my trip down there turned into basically a weekend long trip. While I could have just driven all there and all the way home (a nice three hour drive each way…) I decided to stay at my family’s summer house in Brick, NJ on Friday night, which is about an hour and a half from Wildwood. On Saturday morning, I headed down to Wildwood and then decided to stay over at the summer house on Saturday night again. It was kind of like a mini weekend vacation! So, with all the time I had to screw around, I decided to take a little off-season sightseeing tour up the Jersey coast!

After leaving the old Hunt’s Pier, I took a walk down the boardwalk to Mariner’s Landing only to find some orange construction signs and a chain link fence blocking the way. Apparently they’re doing some boardwalk replacement in front of Mariner’s Landing and the old Midway pier (photo). From what I’ve seen in the past, this section doesn’t really need to be fixed up as much as some areas between Mariner’s Landing and Surfside Pier; some of the boards there are all loose and would rock up and down when traveled across.
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With not much of an option, I turned around and proceeded to walk down to Sportland Pier. This side of the boardwalk is never as crowded as the other ends in the summer, and the same was true in the off-season…actually, no one was there! I probably could have wandered about the pier since it wasn’t locked off or anything, but I decided not to. Here’s a few pics near Sportland Pier and Surfside Pier!
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Next I went back to my car and drove up through Wildwood Crest. To my total non-amazement, the place was absolutely dead; I only saw a few cars the entire time while there. I know this one guy who works at a restaurant on the Wildwood boardwalk (Olympic Flame for anyone who’s been to the ‘boards’) and he once said that “Wildwood gets so dead that you could roll a bowling ball down the street.” I’m not exactly sure what that means but if I had a bowling ball, I’d certainly do it in the Crest! Then I decided to stop once more at the boardwalk, on the other side of the construction, to see if anything noticeable was going on at Mariner’s Landing and Wild Wheels. I didn’t see much activity save for a person taking pictures of the boardwalk construction; here’s the pics of the Crest and the boardwalk!