New Jersey is small enough to cross in an afternoon and packed tight enough that the trivia comes at you fast. In a single run down the Garden State Parkway you pass Newark, the edge of the Pine Barrens, Atlantic City and Cape May. That’s why this deck leans on places rather than scenery.
The exit-number game
Parkway exit numbers match the mileposts, and the mileposts start at zero in Cape May. Use that as the game board:
- Every time you pass an exit that ends in 0, the reader asks one question.
- If the exit sign names a town that appears in the deck (Paterson, Hoboken, Trenton, Atlantic City, Cape May), the next question is worth double.
- Whoever gets the most right by the time you reach the Shore picks the first boardwalk stop.
It works on the Turnpike too, where the exits are numbered in order along the road rather than by mile.
A route idea: down the Shore to Cape May
Start north and take the Parkway south. Barnegat Lighthouse, “Old Barney,” is a detour out to Long Beach Island. Atlantic City and its boardwalk come next, then Margate, where Lucy the Elephant has stood since 1881. End in Cape May with its Victorian houses. From there, the Cape May–Lewes Ferry crosses Delaware Bay if you’re continuing south. Five questions in the deck are stops on this one road.
The dinosaur question
The Hadrosaurus question tends to surprise people. In 1858, a dinosaur skeleton far more complete than any found before it was dug up in Haddonfield, a town near Philadelphia, and it became one of the first dinosaur skeletons ever mounted for display. It’s now New Jersey’s state dinosaur, and there’s a statue of it in the middle of town.
Three New Jersey facts that aren’t in the deck
- Sandy Hook Lighthouse, first lit in 1764, is the oldest working lighthouse in the United States.
- The state shell is the knobbed whelk.
- George Washington’s army spent the hard winter of 1779–80 camped at Morristown.