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My wallet’s too heavy—heading down to the AC casinos to spend it & bringing my 4yo, the good luck kid http://www.apple.com/retail/thepier/

Trip to Apple Pie Hill: The Atsion fire tower: don’t look down!

Yesterday the kids and I took a road trip to Apple Pie Hill, a summit of loose gravel that towers over the South Jersey pinelands from a dizzying height of 208 feet above sea level. A fire watch tower on the summit adds another few dozen feet, enough to get a visitor over the treetops. On a clear day it’s said you can see the skylines of Atlantic City and Philadelphia. Fortunately for me it was an quintessentially beautifully fall day—clear and crisp. It was easy to spot the cities, both thirty-two miles away (mostly to the south and mostly to the east respectively) and here’s blowups of the two resultant photos:


More pictures, from left: Sand road to the hill, the fire tower, the view down through the steps of the tower (the kids were left in the car), two year old Francis eager but thwarted attempt to repeat Papa’s climb up tower. Click individual photos for enlarged and geotagged versions. More photos of this and out stopover at Atsion later in the day on yesterday’s Flickr page.

For those interested in repeating our journey, here’s a map showing our route up and back. I was mostly winging it, depending on these directions from NJPineslandsandDownJersey.com starting from nearby Chatsworth NJ, self-styled “Capital of the Pine Barrens.”



View Larger Map (via Quaker Ranter Martin Kelley)

Apple Pie Hill: Theo holds up his amazing find: imagine stumbling over a pine cone way out there!

Trip to Pine Barren’s famous Apple Pie Hill: The road to the summit of Apple Pie Hill

Trip to Pine Barren’s famous Apple Pie Hill: The Apple Pie watch tower

Trip to Pine Barren’s famous Apple Pie Hill: Looking down through the tower’s staircase

Trip to Pine Barren’s famous Apple Pie Hill: Theo chickened out on climbing the tower (smart) but Francis and Elmo were game (and were stopped)

Trip to Pine Barren’s famous Apple Pie Hill: You can look out across the entire width of the state of New Jersey from Apple Pie Hill’s fire tower. Both cities sit thirty-two miles from the hill.

Trip to Pine Barren’s famous Apple Pie Hill: Lunch was in order after the adventure.