The next morning we collected our car from the aiport and headed north, in order to head south again. We were aiming for Cape May, the southern most tip of the New Jersey shore, and after much debate with the satnav lady, several u-turns off freeways and a few trips on and off the NJ Turnpike, we finally made it along the coast and to Cape May.

There we found a nice little motel, which was actually the southern-most motel on the coast, and went to explore the town. It's actually more like a village, made up of very large Victorian/Colonial looking wooden houses and holiday homes. There's a small, quaint street with cute shops and olde-worlde eateries and boutiques, and an amazing shop selling fudge and cheap Easter eggs - the fudge was delicious!

We had a walk on the beach and then went for dinner in pub/restaurant and I had lobster roll, which was also yummy!

The next morning we had another wander round the town before heading off up the coast. The shore line is made up of lots of small islands and inlets with a mixture of incredibly large houses with private jettys and beaches, and tatty run-down towns.

We stopped at some large, mainly deserted beaches, and had a nose round some posh private streets. Just south of Atlantic City there's a rather unusual tourist attraction in the shape of a huge elephant - called Lucy. She is now a historical landmark and you can pay to go inside her, but we decided not to. We then hit Atlantic City. This is a poor-mans Vegas and it looked even more run down against the grey skies and overweight, drunk Americans. We had a walk along the boardwalk and got a pretzel and some salt water taffy and decided to carry on driving north. We got to Toms River and stopped in a little local diner for dinner. Unfortunately a lot of the motels were either closed, full or too expensive, so we carried on driving to Seaside Heights where we found a cheap and rather tatty motel and went to bed.

The next morning we had walk to explore the closed down seaside town and to look at all the fairground rides and unused neon signs, waiting for the season to start so they can be fired up again.

We found a nice little diner/cafe for breakfast, which was actually the only place open! I'll never tire of French toast and bacon for breakfast. I've also got used to the breakfast diner lingo - the size of pancake stack, the way you want your sausages presented, how you want your eggs, the myriad of bread choices, the type of syrup you want, and the endless coffee refills!

Our next stop was the quaint seadside town of Ocean Grove. This is a larger version of Cape May with more shops and a bit more life. The residential area is built around a huge wooden church auditorium which dominates the main square. Coming off the side streets are the tented houses, which were just being constructed in time for the summer and hot weather. Every summer families rent out the house/tent combinations and set up a temporary community which was orginally based around the church and activities.

From Ocean Grove we walked along the boardwalk and through the derelict casino into Asbury Park - home to the Stone Pony, the Convention Centre, Madam Maries 'Temple of Knowledge', Tillie and the Wonder Bar and a manor of all other things featured in Springsteens songs. There were a few shops open, but there isn't actually that much to be open, so we had a walk back along the beach to Ocean Grove and the car.

From there we decided to head to Trenton for the evening, but the place looked a little 'unsavoury' to say the least, so we headed on to Princeton. This was a very nice and posh-looking university (or college) town, but with no motels. So we drove a bit longer across some incredibly confusing traffic junctions and stopped at a motel with a nice diner nearby. So we sat and had our final meal of our mini east coast adventure. Tomorrow we would head back to Washington Dulles airport where we would both be boarding planes - Louise back to Heathrow and me back to Tacoma - Washington to Washington again...