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