Weekend Picks: Memorable Memorial
It’s Memorial Day weekend, and all of New Jersey is heading down the Shore. Or are we?
Some of us will be shopping. Up in Sussex County the specialty shops of rural Lafayette Village are having their annual Memorial Day event, which this years includes a sale of heirloom tomato plants. In Central New Jersey, the outlets in Flemington are having a sidewalk sale. And in South Jersey, cool Collingswood has its 29th annual May Fair on Saturday, with music and art exhibits along Haddon Ave.
Some of us will be spectators. Saturday is opening day for the Cowtown Rodeo down in Pilesgrove — it’s New Jersey’s own Western-style professional rodeo with cowboys and bucking broncos. Or you can watch professional cyclists: the four-day Tour of Somerville Cycling Series, first held in 1940, is one of the top competitive cycling events in the country; it gets off tomorrow and culminates Monday with a 50-mile race through town.
It’s also a big weekend for a another kind of bicycling, with the U.S. Open of Mountain Biking at Diablo Free Ride Park, part of the Mountain Creek Resort in Vernon, Friday through Sunday. Last year, nearly 450 racers from seven different countries and 37 different states competed.
Maybe you just want to relax. One place to do that is at the Blues and Wine Festival sponsored by the Garden State Wine Growers Association Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. at Natirar Park, in the Somerset hills. There will be hundreds of bottlings to taste from New Jersey wineries, a live blues bands, artisan vendors, gourmet food and kids’ activities.
You can do good, too, this weekend. On Saturday starting at noon The Glen Rock Poverty Project is holding a Water for Africa Festival at Wilde Memorial Park. There will be music, fair trade shopping, games and educational activities to raise funds to buy PlayPumps, devices that double as a water pump and a merry-go-round for children (top picture). Organizers hope to provide 12,000 people with clean water, a precious commodity in Africa.
Water is precious in here, too, specially when it comes to our very own Jersey Shore. The Shore is more than the beach, of course — and this weekend just about every restaurant or shop that had not opened yet will open. It’s summer, starting now. Look for our NJ My Way story tomorrow with a rundown of what’s new and what’s hot at the Shore.
Also, our partners at New Jersey Monthly are out with their annual Shore issue, which includes two features by our own NJ My Way editor in chief. He spent time running around the Shore, finding the last of the secluded beaches in New Jersey, and then went looking for what people who in the 1980s hung out in classic twenty-something Shore bars like The Osprey are doing on their Shore vacations now that they are fifty-something.
He cannot believe he gets paid for doing this.
Tags: Flemington | Collingswood | rodeo | Cowtown | Somerville | Shopping | Garden State Wine Growers Association | Memorial Day | Tour of Somerville | Mountain Creek | Diablo Free Ride Park | Lafayette Village | outlets | The Osprey | Water for Africa Festival
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