New Jersey was the third state admitted to the Union, and it still isn’t finished.  Anyone who lives here knows you can’t drive more than 500 feet without encountering road construction, none of which ever seems to be actually actively going on.  There might be a few guys standing around a hole in the road staring into it with their hands on their hips, but that’s all the action there is to be had.  So, naturally, it was only my third stop on the Odyssey when I stumbled upon it on my way to the Haunted Bridge of Elmer, where there are supposedly “mysterious lights and footprints.”

Any time you see those orange barrels you can immediately add half an hour to your travel time, and as usual I wasn’t even able to tell what they were fixing, or constructing, or demolishing.  The only thing I knew was that a very annoyed-looking cop state trooper was directing all the traffic into the left lane four cars at a time, and aside from being able to pretend I was in England for a little while, it was a colossal waste of time.

The town of Elmer is very flat, beige, and looks like the town where Napoleon Dynamite lives.  There are vast expanses of land which I presume have crops growing on them in the spring, and an overwhelming number of silos.  (Where does one get a silo?  Do you just make your own?  Do you hire a crew to come out and make it to your specifications?  Why don’t I know this)?

I was actually able to find the road with the Haunted Bridge relatively easily (Slabtown Road), and sure enough, it looks like it would be a bit spooky at night, as there are no streetlights.  Naturally, I had to shoot into the light, because that’s the kind of photographer I am (sorry, Ed):

about four miles down I saw a bridge stretching the (small) expanse of a lake.  Excitedly, I pulled over, only to see this sign:

  

Well, that was foreboding.  Of course, I had already trespassed once today, so I didn’t think this would make me any worse of an outlaw, so I started walking up and down the bridge looking for mysterious lights and/or footsteps.

I didn’t hear any footsteps, but I did hear something, a delightful melodic tone, sort of like what the aliens used for communication in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  I was all excited until I found out it was my phone.

Then I found this waterfall:

  

It’s a man-made waterfall, but if you leave the huge disgusting sewer-pipe at the mouth of it out of the picture, it actually makes a very nice shot.  Here’s the other end:

I still didn’t see any mysterious lights or hear any mysterious footsteps.  I’m surprised anyone can hear anything there with the clamoring of the waterfall.  I decided to pack it in and head for The Pebble Palace of Sewell.

Okay, one last shot of the lake.  I like nature photography:

I have never in my life gone on vacation and not left something at home, and as I got back into the car, I realized that this time it was my comb.  Annoyed, I plugged “CVS” into the GPS, and fortunately there was one less than two miles away.  This wasn’t really a surprise, since South Jersey is lousy with drug stores.

What was a surprise—and a wonderful one at that—was a truck across the corner from the CVS almost completely buried in dirt:

I was elated!  Two bouts of unscheduled weirdness on the very first day!  This makes me very optimistic for the rest of the trip.  But I can’t imagine how the truck got there, or why another truck would have kept dumping dirt on it—it didn’t seem logical.  Had there been a driver in the truck at the time and the other driver was enacting some sort of revenge on him like in "Dolan's Cadillac?"  Why did they only bury the left-hand side of it?  How did it even get up that high?  I mean, four-wheel drive can only do so much. There were no other trucks around—it was an empty lot.

Still, I was excited at my additional find, and pressed on to the Pebble Palace of Sewell.

I had some difficulty with this, since the GPS confused Hurffville Road with Hurffville Cross Road.  I consulted the map (Ed was at work, so I couldn’t phone in for navigation) and The Guidebook and saw that technically the Pebble Palace was in Deptford.  Well, okay.  I found the correct road and headed off.

Sadly, the Pebble Palace proved to be the first complete failure on the Odyssey.  If it’s still there (which it must be, since how would you move something like that?), it’s in some dude’s backyard.  Considering that the Wedgewood Country Club is also on that road, you can imagine the scale of the houses there, and I wasn’t about to cruise up and down various millionaire’s driveways.

But it was okay…the Cookie Jar House of Deptford was only eight miles away!

I had absolutely no trouble finding this, since The Guidebook gave an exact address.  Here it is:

Is that not totally adorable?  I would love to live there.  I’ll bet the cool kids would have played with me if I had grown up in a place like that.  I think the Christmas decorations make it even cuter.

All in all, I’m more than satisfied with my first day.  I saw many more things than I thought I would.  Tomorrow’s first stop will be the legendary Grover’s Mill, site of the War of the Worlds Martian invasion of 1938

Odyssey out.