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 209 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 west 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 NJPines​land​sand​Down​Jer​sey​.com start­ing from nearby Chatsworth NJ, self-styled “Cap­i­tal of the Pine Barrens.”

Other map views: View Larger Map | Satel­lite with Route Map