Silverball Retro Arcade is a museum on the Asbury Park boardwalk where you don’t just look at pinball history behind glass — you flip, slam, and tilt your way through it. It holds a rotating collection of roughly 600 vintage and modern pinball and arcade machines, with about 200 on the floor at any given…
Lucy the Elephant: Why There’s a Six-Story Pachyderm on the Jersey Shore
Lucy the Elephant is a six-story elephant-shaped building in Margate City, New Jersey, built in 1881 as a real estate stunt. She’s the oldest surviving roadside attraction in America, a National Historic Landmark, and one of the only buildings on earth you can walk into through its leg. If you’ve driven the coast road south…
The Palace of Depression: Vineland’s Junk Castle Built on $4 and a Vision
The Palace of Depression is a hand-built castle of scrap metal, broken bottles, and salvaged concrete that sits on a swampy four-acre lot in Vineland, New Jersey. A self-described former gold miner named George Daynor built the original in 1932 to prove the Great Depression could be beaten with nothing but junk and stubbornness, and…
Cowtown Rodeo: The Oldest Weekly Rodeo in America Is Hiding in Rural New Jersey
Cowtown Rodeo is a working rodeo arena in Pilesgrove Township, New Jersey, that has hosted bull riding, barrel racing, and saddle bronc competitions every Saturday night from late May through September since 1955. It’s recognized as the oldest weekly professional rodeo in the United States, and it’s run by the same family that started it…
Insectropolis: The Bug Museum Toms River Built Out of a Pest Control Company
Imagine a pest control company deciding the best way to teach people about bugs isn’t a pamphlet — it’s an entire museum shaped like a tiny city. That’s exactly what happened in Toms River, New Jersey, where Insectropolis turns the stuff of nightmares into a genuinely fun afternoon out. If you’ve ever wondered whether a…
Battleship New Jersey: Camden’s Floating Museum You Can Sleep Aboard
The Battleship New Jersey museum sits on the Camden waterfront, directly across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, and lets you walk the actual decks, gun turrets, and bunk rooms of the most decorated battleship in U.S. Navy history. You can tour it in an afternoon, or — if you’re a little strange like me —…
Sterling Hill Mining Museum: The NJ Mine Where Rocks Glow Like Neon
Sterling Hill Mining Museum is a former working zinc mine in Ogdensburg, New Jersey, where you can walk a quarter mile underground into a real mine shaft and watch ordinary-looking rocks burst into electric green, pink, and orange under ultraviolet light. It’s the only place in the state where you can tour a preserved underground…
The 10 Best RV Parks and Campgrounds in Maine
The best RV parks and campgrounds in Maine stretch from oceanfront bluffs near Acadia National Park to quiet state park loops on Moosehead Lake, with options ranging from full-hookup resort campgrounds to rustic lakeside sites with no hookups at all. If you’re mapping out a Maine RV trip, this list covers ten standout campgrounds across…
The Doo Wop Experience Museum: Wildwood’s Neon Time Capsule
The Doo Wop Experience Museum is a free, small-scale roadside museum in Wildwood, New Jersey, dedicated to the neon-drenched motel culture of the 1950s and 60s. It’s housed inside a rescued mid-century diner and surrounded by a “Neon Sign Garden” full of salvaged motel signs that would otherwise have been scrapped. If you’ve ever driven…
The 10 Best RV Parks and Campgrounds in Virginia
If you’re hunting for the best RV parks and campgrounds in Virginia, your short list should include waterfront resorts on the Chesapeake Bay, mountain campgrounds tucked into the Shenandoah Valley, and a couple of state parks that have been welcoming campers since the 1930s. Virginia’s geography does a lot of the heavy lifting here —…