Gravelly Point Road is a small strip of road in Highlands, NJ. From the beach at the end of Gravelly Point Road, the view includes Sandy Hook, the Manhattan skyline and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. This is a road deep in history. Summers on the New Jersey shore have been spent here for more than 100 years. This is like retuning to times when this were simple and the pleasure of spending time with family and friends is special. Everyone knows everyone here. Making memories is important. This is the 76th annual Bungalow Day. It’s always the 3rd Saturday in August. It’s like a block party full of family fun. It starts at 9am with a parade down the road. There’s a theme every year this year it’s MardiGras. There’s a bungalow decorating contest. Water and land races, tug-of-war and egg-throwing contests are among the activities normally held throughout the day. The end of the day is spent with live music beach party that you honestly wish will never end. The cool evening breeze is always welcoming to the tunes of Mike Flood who performs a mix of old sea songs as well as old acoustic rock and roll tunes. This makes returning here year after year a wonderful kind of family reunion.
Mark B.
Classificação do local: 5 Jacksonville, FL
Now this is a place of my youth. I have been coming here during the summer since I was in cloth diapers. Really I am part of the big Gravelly Family that has seen generations grow up. In fact a couple of years ago we brought a few grandkids here and they were the 4th generation to have slept in bungalow #68. Right off the water but we are still able to sit on the porch and look into the giant city of New York. There were many many good even great times here. From learning how to sail from my uncle’s sailing school to my cousin’s hobie cats for which she was a sailing team member. To fishing off of one of the pier or one of the older marinas. I also remember just wonder down the beach into town where the lobster boats used to dock. I remember buying a crate of lobsters for like 25 bucks. Or catching a boatload of bluefish. You can catch 2 kinds of flounder here. The ones like we call flounder in the south they call fluke. Then their flounder which has a little pucker mouth and you catch with with red blood worms. An yes they are a saltwater fish and you use worms to catch them. Then you could dig for a couple kinds of clams like little neck pisser and hard shell clams and even soft shell clams. Literally by the little dingy boats full. Oh the good old days when you could almost run wild sailing, swimming, fishing, playing ball, or even running up and down the very steep red hill. But gravelly in really a great family beach with a mere 20 or 30 moms. It was and is a great place to raise your kids. Now day specially since Hurricane Sandy which destroyed many of the bungalows. There are some that were torn down during the storm. Some that are scheduled to come down. Unfortunately our dear #68 is on the list to be torn down. Maybe we can figure a way to just repair it and run with that. This is where it hurts the most to come up and see if still boarded up with no life in it. The bungalow know as # 68 was a major hub of activity on bungalow day for sure. It was the place for a quick snack if you needed or a beer stop before the beach. But then life moves on, on gravelly point road but the biggest lost was that of my cousin who kind of run the place. Well for so many years even back in the 30’s thru the 70’s my grand parents were one of the big families of Gravelly. Now we did hold the record for the most kids and we were the second bungalow built on the road. That record goes out to the McQuade’s with their 9 children and the first ever bungalow built on the beach. There was even a massive flood tide that washed up a house boat. They later secured the boat and built a house atop of the hull. This bungalow was owned by a flood family. Image that the Flood’s house was brought in with a flood. There are many families that have called Gravelly home. So much history is littered down this road. I was just about raised here coming up most summers from a very young age to my mid teens. I could really go on for pages but Gravelly holds a special place in my heart. So if you ever get a chance to visit Highland NJ stop in and just tell everyone that you are friends with Mark from Florida. I promise you will be welcomed with open arms and probably a beer.
