New Jersey

I am really tired of the bad rap that New Jersey gets. We are the joke of the nation. Okay so it's well deserved in some areas like politics and corruption. Our taxes are outrageous, car insurance is insane. But we are not that bad. Our land is beautiful. We do not deserve all the jokes, we are not the armpit of the nation, we do not all talk the same, we do not all have family members in the mob, we do not all have chemicals buried in our back yards, the whole state does not smell like rotten eggs.

The truth is our state is such a diverse land. How many states have forests, seashores, fields and bogs of veggies and fruits, historical battlefields, mountains, rivers, pinelands, historical lighthouses. We have all of that. Sometimes in the same county, or even the same town. I can drive from one side of my town to the other and go from bayside to countryside, literally. My town smells of nothing but salty air, no chemicals, no rotten egg smell, we do not talk like the Nanny or Tony Soprano, and no, we are not from New Jesoooiy. When it comes time to get a Christmas tree, we go 5 minutes from our home and cut down a pine tree on a tree farm. A Christmas tree farm 10 minutes from the bay. Who would have thought that? We have wildlife, tons of it. We are called the Garden State for a reason.

I can travel less than 30 minutes in any directions from my home and be in the mountains, go picking fruits and veggies, be at the shore, be at an amusement park, climb the stairs of a lighthouse, go fishing in the ocean, the list goes on and on. Yes we have industry here, in parts of our state not our WHOLE state. Our state doesn't smell, our state isn't a garbage dump, we all aren't the same in the way we talk and dress, and no our hair is not a mile high (although maybe in the 90's it was). I am from New Jersey, and proud of it!