Giant Wine Bottles/Mr. Bill's/Fifteen Foot Woman

So today we went on another Weird NJ adventure. This time no cemeteries, no haunted locations, no abandoned things, it was all about the Giants! Not the football team but the giant statues sitting outside local businesses. 

So we started off coming from Galloway. We got on route 30 west and stopped in Egg Harbor City to take a picture of the giant wine bottle advertising for Renult Winery just down the road. I was rushing it because people were looking at us taking pictures and i hate that so we quickly took pictures and went off.

Next we took another pit stop in Hammonton to take a picture of yet another giant wine bottle also advertising for Renult Winery. We had to park in this driveway thing to get to the bottle since there really was no where to park off the road by the bottle. I didn’t rush this one because i was feeling more comfortable here.

Next we started heading to Mr. Bill’s but then my grandpa said he wasn’t that hungry yet so we just decided to go to the fifteen foot woman instead. We got to Blackwood which was further away then i originally thought. We got the tire place that the Fifteen foot woman is outside of. We parked and took a couple pictures. As we were about to walk back to the car a guy comes towards us. “Are you taking pictures?” he asked. we answered yes. I thought he was going to tell us we had to pay to take pictures but instead he handed this box to us saying it was a free gift for stopping and taking pictures. inside the box was a mini statue of the bigger statue outside their shop. we said thanks and headed back to the car.

Lastly, we went back to Mr. Bill’s and tried to take pictures but the sun was in the way so we decided to go in and eat then try again. We ordered our food sat down and then ate. Man do they give you alot of food! My grandpa got a “short” stack of pancakes but in reality it was a pretty large stack. I got cheese fries. :)

After that we headed home. Now were getting ready for the next adventure!

The Grave of the Gypsy King/Drew University/Bayley Ellard High School

So today was yet another day of visiting locations. I slept over my friends house the night before and stayed up late so i was pretty tired when i woke up this morning. I got up, drove to my Grandpa’s house and we got in his car and headed up to Madison. It took us about 2 hours to get there so it was a pretty long trip. Today we were visiting the gypsy king, drew university, and the bayley ellard high school.
We pulled up to the Hillside cemetery and parked up on the hill. I could already tell it was a old cemetery. There were gravestones there from the late 1700’s. I took some pictures of the cemetery from on top of the hill and worked my way down the hill to the bottom and i found the grave of the Gypsy King, Naylor Harrison. I don’t quite understand how he is the “gypsy king” but it is in Weird NJ so i have to visit it. We took a couple pictures and headed down the street to Drew University.

 Drew University is a private college, one i could never afford but one of the buildings, Mead Hall, is said to be haunted by the originals mansions owner’s wife. Something like that. So we parked and snapped a couple pictures. then it was my grandpa’s idea to go inside. i wasn’t crazy about it but when we walked inside it was so nice. it made me want to go to college there! it was an old college so the buildings are old. Mead hall burnt down and was rebuilt in the 90’s so it wasn’t the original building.

Next we stopped at McDonald’s to get something to eat and we ate at the same McDonald’s we ate at when we went to go to Morristown.

Lastly we went to the Bayley Ellard High School. It was a catholic high school that closed down in 2005. I thought it was sitting there abandoned but it was being used by the church. It a catholic center for evangelization called St. Paul inside the walls. we took the pictures from the outside and once again my grandpa wanted to adventure to the inside so i said ok. First off the building itself was beautiful and when we walked inside it was even more nice :D We talked to the front desk lady and she was nice she told us the history of the school and such and this one guy told us about all the construction that took the re-do the place. Its not like the place is open for tours but we just decided to go inside.

After that we got back in the car and headed back home. Now to get ready for the next location! 

The Inventor of Octane pt. 2

So i was supposed to wake up at the same time my boyfriend woke up today for school which is around 7:30 to get up and go back to the cemetery to find the Inventor of Octane. But our bed was so warm and cozy that i didn't want to get up so i slept right through the morning. When my boyfriend got out of school at like 10:45 he called and was like "i'm guessing you didn't go" and i said no and he laughed. But when he got home his friend called him asking him if he wanted to go to the gym and my boyfriend was willing to go so i decided while he was at the gym i would go to the cemetery.

So at like 12:15ish i got in my car and went to the cemetery while my boyfriend got in his car to go to the gym. Mind you i hate going to locations alone. i don't know i why i just don't like it. But i drove the 15 mins it took to get from his house to the Cemetery. I got there and there were like 5 cars there and i was wondering if there was a funeral today but it was just all people paying their respects. I got out of the car and began my search for the inventor of octane. i pulled up what the gravestone looked like and looked and looked section by section. I was in the front section when i decided to go down the stairs that were there to the bottom of a hill where there were three memorial gravestones. one was to something, i have no idea because the whole gravestone was in Russian. The Middle gravestone was just the name of the church and when it was founded and lastly the one on the left said someones name and then THE INVENTOR OF OCTANE. i was like holy crap i just found it. If i never came down the hill i would have spent all that time in the actual cemetery looking for it and would have never found it. I took some pictures with my Camera and my phone and sent a pictures message to my boyfriend. I got in the car and headed home. 

When i got back to my boyfriends house i told him where it was and he was like omg we were in the exact same spot yesterday! If only we looked harder at the gravestones!

So i'm happy i found it. And now were going to another location on Thursday, my grandpa is coming to this one so hopefully the weather is good!

The Inventor of Octane

So since i was staying at my boyfriends house this weekend i found a nearby location we could do. It was about a ten min ride from his house. It was the St. Mary’s Russian orthodox Church Cemetery. The inventor of Octane is buried there. So since we were at a get together with his friends last night and slept in till 12 then took a shower we didn’t leave the house until about 2:30 which is fine because it’s not like it was a long trip anyway.

I have seen the cemetery before on the way to the Deb grave in Imlaystown and i thought it looked nice and then when i got the Weird NJ magazines issues 4, 5, and 6 one of them mentioned that the Inventor of Octane was buried at this cemetery. So i told my boyfriend about it and he was down to go next time i went up. 

We drove up into the middle of the cemetery and parked. We got out and there were a TON of gravestones. i would say over 1,000 were buried there and it was a huge cemetery too. I had no idea what the gravestone of the octane guy looked like let alone know where it was located in the cemetery. So we just started looking around taking pictures of gravestones that looked cool. There was this big morgue in the middle-ish of the cemetery that was pretty cool. We found a couple gravestones that had the top of it has the top of a russian church. Most gravestones though had the Russian Cross as the top. While walking around my boyfriend whipped out his phone and googled the inventor of octane and found a picture of what the gravestone looked like. It was small and looked like alot of the other gravestones there. So since the cemetery was so big and we were running out of daylight we decided to just go home. I also took some pictures of the exterior of the church and we got back in the car and took a trip to the deb grave since it was about a 10 min drive from where we were and i really wanted to show my boyfriend. We didn’t spend too much time there and went home since we were freezing cold. 

My boyfriend has to get up early for school so i decided i’m going back to the cemetery to look for the gravestone of the inventor of octane and see if i can find it. Even though it will proly be really cold but whatever. 

Fish Factory/Tuckerton Tower/Chair House

So today since me and my boyfriend had nothing to do we decided to go to a location. We decided to go visit the Fish Factory in Tuckerton, the Tuckerton Tower and the Chair House.

So we got in the car and headed up the parkway until we got off the exit to Tuckerton/Little Egg Harbor Township. We got on Great Bay Blvd./Seven Bridges Rd. and getting down to the very edge took about 20 mins. On the way there we passed a marina that was totally destroyed by Hurricane Sandy so we stopped and took a picture of that. Then we got down to the very end and saw the abandoned fish factory on an island in the bay. pretty much all that’s left of the building is it’s skeleton and a water tower.

Next we drove up to Mystic island which is a area near Tuckerton where the base of an WW1 tower is located. It was used by the Germans and all that’s left is this itty bitty base. So we took pictures of that.

Finally we drove up route 9 and saw the Chair House. The Chair House is this old Victorian house that has a chair on the very top of the roof. weird huh?