With a recent afternoon to myself I decided to take a quick trip down to Camden New Jersey to check out a piece of history I’ve been wanting to check out for a long time.  After about a 45 minute drive south on 295 I arrived at the recently renovated Camden Waterfront that includes the Adventure Aquarium, the Camden Riversharks minor league baseball team, and the Children’s Garden.  But what I was here for was the huge battleship The USS New Jersey also knows as the “Big J”.

The USS New Jersey (BB-62) is an Iowa-Class Battleship.  It’s 887 feet (270.54 meters) in length, has a beam (width) of 108.2 feet (33.0 meters), a displacement of 58,000 tons, and had a crew of over 1,900 sailors.  It was launched in 1942 and served in World War II, The Korean War, The Vietnam War, and the Lebanese Civil War.  The battleship was decommissioned for the final time in 1991 after serving a total of 21 years in the active fleet.  In 2000 it was announced that the USS New Jersey would become a museum located at its final resting place on the Camden Waterfront.

Whew, now with all technical background out of the way let me say this is really an amazing ship (Sorry in advance as I’ll probably say that a few more times).  Before I actually went aboard there was a penny machine available right outside the gift shop on the dock.  You do not need to pay any admission to use the machine, but if you make the trip here I would highly recommend spending the money and taking the tour.

As you would assume the designs on the pennies incorporate the battleship in them.  The machine as shown above is a 4 design hand crank model.

The designs include:  Battleship New Jersey The Big “J”, BB-62 Firepower for Freedom Shield, United States Navy emblem, WWII / Korea / Vietnam.

With the pennies in my pocket I was ready to climb aboard the ship.  There are  two different tours you can take.  There is a self guided tour which I opted for just due to a limited amount of time I had available that afternoon.  But there is a guided tour available which is usually given by a very knowledgeable Veteran which gives a lot of personal insight of what it was like on the Battleship.

The self guided tour is done by following a special colored light painted on the deck of the ship and takes you in through all the different areas of the ship.  Each area has a ton of information and historical pictures available to give you more details about what it was like on board.

In the crew quarters you get a sense of how the more than 1,900 sailors were all packed into this ship.  It really is a huge floating city, but was hard to imagine that many people on all at once.  Luckily I was only there with about 20 other people and it was still pretty cramped walking through the different areas.

Above is a picture of the mess deck that fed the crew.  As you can see there was very little space that wasn’t used for some purpose.

Last up was the Captains in port quarters.  This was apparently mostly used for entertaining purposes, but gives a very interesting perspective of life on the USS New Jersey.  After my experience here I really want to head into New York and check out the USS Intrepid.  I may even come back and take the guided tour just to get some more details about what it was like to serve on this amazing Battleship.

A couple of days before July 4th I had taken a day off from work to stay at home with my daughter Hanna.  I had contemplated just staying in the house but with the crappy weather we have been having in Jersey I figured it was a good opportunity to get outside and visit someplace we hadn’t been to in a while.

As I do with most trips I plan I checked out pennycollector.com to see where some new penny machines may be located that needed to be pressed.  I have visited and acquired pretty much every penny machine available in the state, but ever now and then new machines do pop up and this was no different.  I saw that Six Flags Great Adventure had 2 new machines.  A few years ago I would visit Six Flags a few times a year trying to update the online records of the penny machines and which were still active, their current locations and any changes.  Unfortunately about 2 years ago all the machines were taken away and the last time I had checked there were still none available.  So needless to say I was excited to see some new machines had made their way back on stage.

Another new attraction at this Six Flags is their Safari Off Road Adventure.  They used to have a safari that you could drive through in your own car and the animals would come over for an up close and personal visit.

This was another attraction that closed a few years ago, but has recently reopened with a slight change to how you experience it.  Now you get in a large open view jeep style vehicle and there is a driver and separate guide that take you through the safari .  I had heard that this was a pretty popular attraction so we decided to head here as soon as the park opened.

The entire trip through the Safari takes about 40-45 minutes.  There is a stop in the middle of the trip where your dropped off at the Camp Aventura where there are some smaller animals you can interactive with.  They boast over 1,200 animals on the Safari and there is quite the variety.  The guide was very knowledgeable and more than happy to answer any questions we had along the way.

Once the Safari was over and we were back in the them park we began wondering around checking out the huge (and crazy) roller coasters and other thrill rides they have.  With Hanna being only 2 we were on the look out for some more timid rides.  As we headed out of the Frontier Adventures area of the park we came across the first penny machine.

The machine worked perfectly, well I should mention that I rolled one design short but that was completely as user error.  Luckily I had some extra coins on hand and pressed it again without any issue.  Since this machine was the closes to the Safari it was no surprise that the designs were inspired by the latest attraction: Safari Off Road Adventure was listed on all four designs which also included the Safari Jeep & Giraffe, an Elephant, a rhinoceros, and a Zebra.

We continued wandering around the park and got to checked out some shows and plenty of rides.  Hanna really had a great time on the carousel which is her absolute favorite.  We must have gone on that about 5 times.

She even got to spend some time with some friends I hadn’t seen since I was a kid.

Porky Pig and Marvin Martian, who doesn’t love these two characters.  There was no line and Hanna was able to spend quite a bit of time with them and I was amazed at how comfortable she was with them.  I don’t even know if they play Looney Tunes cartoons on TV, but she loved them anyways and is always looking to make new friends.

After our long day at the park we decided to start heading towards the exit.  I made sure to save the massive gift shop until the end so I didn’t have to carry any souvenirs around all day.  This was also where we found the second penny machine.

The machine was located outside the Looney Tunes Shoppe and the “M”Porium Candy Store.  As with the other machine this one worked perfectly and I made sure to line up my requested designs properly before turning the handle.

The designs at machine were really nice.  I’m not a huge roller coaster fan but these do capture the big thrill rides available at this location.  The designs included: Six Flags Logo Jackson NJ, Nitro, El Toro and Zumanjaro Drop of Doom / Kingda Ka.

We left the park completely exhausted and with a pocket full of new pressed pennies.  I think Hanna fell asleep about 10 seconds after I had her strapped in the car seat.  Luckily we didn’t have a long ride home but it was a lot of fun.  I remember years ago when Six Flags had over 20 penny machines available, and now they only have 2.  But 2 is definitely better than none.  Maybe if I keep my fingers crossed there will be more coming in the near future.