South Jersey's boardwalks are some of my favorite places and I like them year round.  The reasons to like boardwalks in the spring, fall and summer are fairly obvious. Catch a nice day and the combination of the salt air, an ocean view and a little exercise is hard to beat.

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But I am here to tell you that wintertime is also a very special time on our boardwalks. You have a little more room to yourself. Sometimes you have the whole boardwalk to yourself. That quiet, that feeling of solitude, if only for a few minutes, isn't likely to happen in June or July.

Sure, there's much less people-watching happening on the boardwalk in January, but that's part of the beauty of it. You seem to be much more in tune with nature when you are one of the few people up on the boardwalk, looking out at the ocean and taking it all in.

I first began to realize how much I enjoyed boardwalks in wintertime when we rented a house on the beach block of Wissahickon Avenue in Ventnor in the winter of 2015-16, while our house was being raised.

That winter, good weather or bad, I spent time almost every day on the boardwalk. Up until around Christmas, you would see a few people out walking or riding bikes and still enjoying the boardwalk, even as it got colder.

But by January, most of the time I was the only one there, and that may have been my favorite time. It was almost as though it was my own private boardwalk. You experience that "I am the only one left in the world' kind of feeling when you are alone in a place where people usually gather. I loved it!

Don't get me wrong, I also like the feeling of community you get when you are walking on a crowded boardwalk on a beautiful, summer afternoon. But now, when I am on the Ventnor Boardwalk in the summer, with crowds of tourists and a beach full of people down on the sand, I think back to that time when the whole boardwalk was mine and mine alone.

I asked Lite Rock listeners to share their favorite photos of South Jersey boardwalks in the wintertime, and I have assembled a few here in a photo gallery.

I have also included photos I took that winter when we lived along the boardwalk in Ventnor, as well as a few taken during that winter's worst storm of the season, a blizzard they named "Snowzilla".

As you will see, the storm caused extremely high tides and some flooding issues along the coast and gave us a nice blanket of snow along the boardwalk.

South Jersey Boardwalks in Winter

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