Every winter we see listings for maple sugaring tours, and every year we seem to be busy or forget to go. This year we finally went. What will you learn on a maple sugaring tour? A lot!
We went to the Great Swamp in New Jersey for our education. They were offering two sessions on a weekend afternoon – for $3/person (though no one asked for or collected money – and we checked in at the outdoor education center desk).
Follow the maple sugar leaf signs to the sugar shack at the Great Swamp. Copyright Deborah Abrams Kaplan
It’s that time of the year when we stuff ourselves silly and buy to excess. You’re probably already doing things to help those less fortunate. But I wanted to share our experience with the Community FoodBank of New Jersey (CFBNJ).
The food loading area at the CFBNJ. Photo courtesy of the USDA/Flickr.
We usually do a NJ corn maze every year, and it’s often the Stony Hill corn maze. This year was no exception. Why Stony Hill? They have a lot of other activities to do there, many included with the basic admission. The corn maze is well done also.
When we went on a recent Saturday, they had live music, which we could hear inside the maze. They also had a face painter. Not sure if you pay extra for that.
Did you know that October 12 is National Fossil Day? With a few days off this week, and fall break/teachers’ convention coming up next month, you may be looking for day trip ideas. Think about going fossil hunting in New Jersey! Turns out there are a couple of places that are easy to get to, where you can wade through streams looking for sharks’ teeth, oyster shells, squid fossils, and other items that are millions of years old. Even though you’re not by the ocean, this area was once covered in water.
Big Brook Preserve. Copyright Deborah Abrams Kaplan
Jersey Kids likes to do its part helping others, which is why we’ve been participating the past few years with Passports With Purpose. This blogger-run (and all volunteer) fundraiser chooses a new organization and project every year to raise much-needed funds for great projects.
For every $10 donation, you get the chance to win a prize and these Kenyans can get access to e-readers. It’s win-win! Photo courtesy of Worldreader.
This year we’re working with Worldreader, and we’ll be raising funds to bring digital readers (like Kindles) to five libraries in Kenya. Each library will get about 50 e-readers each, providing 6,250 children, teachers and parents with access to more than 50,000 books. The books will be in Swahili and English, with fiction and nonfiction books.The Worldreader program trains the librarians, and also provides field-tested solar chargers to keep the e-readers charged if electricity is scarce. This one speaks to me because I love reading, and so does my son. I can’t imagine not having access to books.
Not a bad place to spend a week with the family! Take a vacation at one of 180 Thousand Trails and Encore RV Resort campgrounds this year. Photo courtesy of Thousand Trails.
So you’re probably dying to know who is providing an amazing prize for this fundraiser, and what you can win. You probably got a hint from the photo above. The answer is:
When I go to a foreign country, I make plans to visit a grocery store. I love seeing all the different products, since it tells you a lot about their culture (like what they eat). So on my recent trip to the Korean Island Spa in Edison, I checked out HMart, which is in the same strip shopping center. It’s a huge Asian grocery store. I’ll share some of my findings.
In addition to the grocery section, they have a mini-mall indoors, with a vendors selling Gangnam style socks (above), as well as make-up, household items, kids’ fun accessories and a dessert shop. Continue reading “Shopping at H Mart in Edison New Jersey”
The last two summers I spent a day at King Spa Fitness in Palisades Park, NJ. It’s a huge Korean spa, and one for which non-Koreans like me need a culture lesson before going. I was thinking of going back this summer, when a friend told me that Island Spa in Edison just opened up this summer, in July. In the name of research, I went there instead.
The exterior of the charcoal island at Island Spa. Photo copyright Deborah Abrams Kaplan
It’s many kids’ dream to operate that heavy equipment they see at construction site. And why not – the equipment is fun! Diggerland USA opened a year ago, in June 2014 as the country’s first construction theme park. We made the trek last weekend and had an awesome time.
Diggerland has a variety of diggers that kids and adults can operate. This is the big digger.
We haven’t been to Branch Brook Park since 2011, to see the cherry blossoms. Each year we plan to go and then something gets in the way. We missed the festival (though to be fair, it’s super crowded) but went last weekend – a week after the festival – to catch the just-past peak trees. They were still gorgeous. This park has the largest collection of cherry trees in the country.
Have you been to the Great Falls in Paterson? If not, it’s worth going. We took a trip over there this summer and it was gorgeous!
This place has a lot of history, going back to Alexander Hamilton’s time, when he envisioned Paterson as the country’s first planned industrial city. He wanted to use hydropower from the Passaic River’s Great Falls. Hamilton and the Society for Establishing Useful Manufacturers (a real mouthful), started this in Paterson in 1792. Since then, Paterson’s industry became known for fabrics (silk spinning, cotton, textile machinery, jute, weaving, dyeing, etc.). When I posted a picture of the Falls on my personal Facebook page some time back, one of my friends said her first job was working in textiles in Paterson, and she’s not even old! You can read more of the history of the Great Falls here.Continue reading “The Great Falls in Paterson”
