Friday, July 13, 2012

Friday Favorites #15

Happy Friday!

I know I get hung up on food for my Friday Favorites, but I'm going to resist since I just talked about food on Monday. :-D

Today I want to highlight something different, something awesome, something right in my backyard...

My town.

Ocean City, New Jersey!

(Not to be confused with Ocean City, Maryland, which in my opinion cannot compare.)

Ocean City is dubbed "America's Greatest Family Resort". We have a  2 1/2 mile boardwalk with two amusement parks, 8 miles of beautiful beaches, and lots of entertainment in the summer as well as throughout the year. We also happen to be a "dry" town.

We roughly have about 11,000 people living in town year round, but in the summer that balloons up to about 150,000!

I LOVE the farmer's market we have every Wednesday in the summer, where I get fresh Jersey tomatoes, fruits, and corn. I also picked up some homemade mozzarella that was completely to die for! I'm usually there when it opens at 8AM.

Every Tuesday is "Funtastic" with live bands, face painting, balloon animals, and magic shows downtown. Every Thursday on the boardwalk is "Family Night", with tons of fun stuff going on. We have our own Ocean City Pops that perform concerts throughout the summer on the boardwalk at our Music Pier.

Just this week I saw in the paper that we were having a Sand Sculpting Contest and a Freckle contest (painted on freckles accepted too).

I could go on about the food on the boardwalk, like fudge, Johnson's popcorn, Crazy Susan's cookies (featured on the Food Network) and homemade ice cream, and funnel cake!

Not to mention I get to see this every day: (taken at 5:45 AM by the hubby who was checking to see if there was any surf)


The hubby took the afternoon off yesterday and we hit the beach. We always joke with the kiddo and say, "Wow, wouldn't it be great to live here?" LOL

It really is!

What about where you live? What do you love best about your town?

23 comments:

Karen Baldwin said...

The shore? I didn't know you were from there. Well, for you it's as the pun says, 'life's a beach'. What a great place to live.

Maria Zannini said...

It sounds wonderful. How is it in the winter?

I live in an unincorporated 'town' which means we have a feed store and a church. The nicest thing about where I live is the relative isolation. It's 15 miles to the closest real town.

Jennifer Shirk said...

Maria: It's still pretty active in the winter with activities on the weekends to draw crowds in. But it definitely becomes a small town where everybody knows everybody. :)

TheBookGirl said...

We went to Point Pleasant Beach for years for the summer; it was lovely, but as the years went on became more and more crowded.

I never knew that Ocean City was a dry town -- that appeals to me as you avoid alot of the rowdiness that can overtake a beach town in the summer.

Linda G. said...

Wow! What an amazing place to live! You lucky duck. :)

Jennifer Shirk said...

Bookgirl: EXACTLY. That's why it's a very family friendly shore town.

Wendy Paine Miller said...

What a view!!!

And I love farmer's markets. We went berry picking today. I love our berry farms and the sense of pride in our town. Our Memorial Day Parade is one of my favorite events in the year.

CT.
~ Wendy

Jessica R. Patch said...

I need to live closer to you. You have the most fun!

What I love most about Memphis is the relaxed people and the BBQ! You just can't beat it! :)

Connie Keller said...

Gorgeous photos!! (I miss the beach.)

We live in Chattanooga. I love the river and all the bridges--so picturesque. It reminds me of Europe.

Cindy R. Wilson said...

Wow, that looks and sounds beautiful! I'd love to live somewhere like that.

I love my town in Colorado. We're in a suburb of Denver, so close to the big city and very close to the mountains. One of my favorite things to do in the summer is drive to one of the nearby ski towns like Breckenridge and enjoy the cool air and fun shops.

Carol Kilgore said...

Love the shore! We were just in Cape May...in May, LOL. I miss the beach in San Antonio, but I love living here. Friendly people, awesome springs and falls, and not much winter. Our little corner of the suburbs is a family-friendly town where kids actually go outside to play and the neighbors know one another. It's wonderful. And the beach is only a couple of hours away :)

Jennifer Shirk said...

Carol, you were in Cape May and didn't contact me??

CJ Kennedy said...

i live in a small, rural town in central Massachusetts. It's a quintessential New England town, town green, bandstand, and an old church with tall white steeple. It's quiet with lots of wildlife. Turkeys, deer, foxes, coyote. (No bear, but they were spotted on Cape Cod and in a Boston suburb this summer) And just before dawn one morning, I heard a fishercat. That scream nearly froze my blood!

Cheryl Klarich said...

Beautiful pictures and superfun post!

I'm a beach girl at heart (who married into the mid-west. I love Forest Park in St.Louis--the site of the 1904 Worlds Fair. Some of the original buildings are still in use!

Liza said...

My husband grew up summering on the Jersey Shore. We have yet to take a vacation there, since we live on the New England shore, but it's on our bucket list.

Old Kitty said...

I love that I can walk everywhere in my town to the shops, station, fields!

Oh but you live in paradise!! What lovely views! Yay! Take care
x

Sarah Forgrave said...

Beautiful pictures, Jennifer! What I love about where I live? I love that I'm in a small-town setting, but I'm a short drive to the city where I can get all the culture I crave. :)

Susan Flett Swiderski said...

I love living here, but boy oh boy, I sure do miss living near the ocean and Chesapeake Bay. Our little historic town still has an old-fashioned small-town feeling, with lots of street festivals and family-oriented activities, which I love, and the big city isn't all that far away, so we have the best of both worlds. But no beautiful beach. No boardwalk. No ocean. No hurricanes, either. Cone to think of it, here is just fine...

Linda Kage said...

What do I love best about my town? Hmm. I don't really know. It doesn't have anything fabulous to make people want to visit it. But it's familiar so I love it!

Ocean City sounds picture perfect!

Shelley Munro said...

The beach looks gorgeous. I can imagine walking on the beach in all weathers. A freckle contest sounds like fun. I'd have a good shot without the painted freckles :)

L. Diane Wolfe said...

And I would really like to visit your two amusement parks.

Sandra Cox said...

I love the ocean. We're about 4.5 hrs out so I don't get to see it as often as I'd like. But our location isn't bad. 4.5 from the ocean, 1.5 from the mountains. Best of both worlds.

Liz Mays said...

I used to live in Eatontown, and one of my favorite things to do was to drive through oceanside communities like yours. Loved that!