Flanders, New Jersey

On Sunday, we drove south to New Jersey. Flanders is in Northeastern New Jersey, close to Lake Hopatcong and Saccasunna, and right between Parsipanny and the Delaware Water Gap. The weather was DREARY, with low hanging fog and drizzle that never lifted. The last of the leaves gave up the fight and floated down all day. But the roads were good, and we had no problems with low overpasses.

After settling in at our (not so great) campground, we took off to explore Stacy's old stomping grounds.

For those of you who don't know, in 1969 when she was a senior in high school, Stacy's family moved from Orinda, California (right over the hill from Oakland/Berkley) to New Providence, NJ.   Talk about culture shock! In California, Santana's "Black Magic Woman" was #1. In New Jersey, the #1 song was The Archies' "Yummy Yummy Yummy, I Have Love in my Tummy". We are about 30 miles from that area. Which actually turned out to be a pretty neat place to live.

Jack and Stacy have both lived so many places in the country, that over the course of the past 4 years, we have completed various chapters of what we call our "Magical History Tour". We have driven areas of Oklahoma, where Jack was born, and Southern California, where Stacy was born and Jack lived in high school and again in his 20s. We've toured Texas and Northern California, where both of us spent some years, and where we originally met in 1977.  All that's left is the Atlanta area, where Jack graduated high school, and we will be done!

Anyway, we drove over to New Providence, which really has not changed all that much in the past 40 years.

Stacy's old house

New Providence High School, where Stacy graduated

Surprisingly, we were able to find our way around, and even got to Fairleigh Dickinson University, where Stacy started her long and varied college career.

It was fun to see the area, and it always makes you wonder, "what if ....?"

We are trying to figure out what to do next. We had planned to spend the next week or 10 days in the Washington DC area, but nothing is open to tourists now due to the government shutdown. We figure we will just head south and see what happens.