Splashing in the Devils Bathtub
Placed on: 5-26-02
By: Ann and Dan

Somewhere in South Jersey lies a circular body of cold, blue water. The
water remains unnaturally cold, even on the hottest of summer days. Some
say that it was created by a meteorite crashing into the ground. Others
speak more ominously of the Devil's bathtub. A bottomless blue hole where
the Jersey Devil himself waits to drag unwary bathers down into the abyss.
Which is correct? We don't know, but just to be safe side we did not go in
despite the heat.

Old timers will tell you that the watery blue hole is nearly impossible to
find. That the bridge has washed away. That you need to have a boat to
reach the spot. But you know how us young whippersnappers are today.
Always looking for the easy way to do things. All I can tell you is that we
left the kayak at home. We parked the car in the Shotgun Range parking lot.
We made a right onto the dirt road and followed the blue circle signs. We
made sure that we never strayed into the areas marked "Warning: Fire Range
Impact Area". Dead skeet littered the road near the range. The road veers
away from the range and there is evidence of a massive uglification project
underway. While we haven't seen the plans for the project, it apparently
involves spreading orange dirt all over the road. The creepy old building
that used to be on the left hand side of the road must not have met building
code standards, because that has been removed leaving only a square outline.
Eventually the road gives way to a much more aesthetically pleasing,
although harder to walk on, sugar sand.

At the jughandle on the right hand side, we left the main road for a pine
needle strewn path marked by another blue circle sign. A short time later
we came to clearing of sorts. On the left we could see the road that we had
left so recently. On the right, a path was marked with blue blazes. Need
we say we took the path. Eventually we came to the body of water in
question. The blue hole of water off to the right if the path seemed to
fill each of us with a sense of unease. Then we realized that there was no
birdsong here, only eery quiet. The smooth surface of the water became
disturbed and a dark shape was slowly
rising to the top.

Who knows why we didn't run down the path in the direction from which we
came? For whatever reason, we ran down the path at 80 degrees. The
opposite direction! Before long we realized that we couldn't go much
further. We would be at the river's edge soon and we could see the washed
out bridge. We ran down a narrow path at 170 degrees. We were running as
quickly as we could, but if we had been walking we probably would have gone
about 20 paces. We turned into a little alcove at 260 degrees. About 11
paces into the alcove, there was a three tree on the left. We hid on the
far side of the tree. We were shaking so hard. We eventually gathered our
courage up enough to run back the way we had came. It was only when we
reached the car that we realized that we had lost something back at the foot
of the tree. We don't have the nerve to go back for it. Do you have the
nerve?

D n A
Furrll@hotmail.com


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