For most New Jersey visitors, the highlights split into the Jersey Shore in the summer (boardwalks, swimming, fudge, the seaside towns of Cape May, Wildwood, Long Beach Island and Asbury Park) and a handful of historical sites the rest of the year.
Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange preserves the inventor's workshop largely intact — well worth the visit for anyone interested in the period when New Jersey was the engine room of American innovation. Princeton University has one of the most beautiful campuses in the country, particularly Nassau Hall and the Princeton University Art Museum.
For nature, the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area in the northwest offers river rafting, swimming, and the Appalachian Trail crossing the Delaware on a footbridge. The Pinelands National Reserve in the south — a million acres of sandy pine forest, blueberry fields and slow tea-coloured rivers — is best explored by canoe on the Wading or Mullica Rivers. Liberty State Park in Jersey City has the closest free view of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline, and the ferry to Ellis Island leaves from there.