New Jersey has a reputation for being a weird state. New Jersey also has so many miles of highways that there’s a long-standing joke that when New Jerseyans want to know where someone lives, they ask “What exit?” So when I say that last night I discovered the weirdest highway exit in New Jersey, I don’t make that claim lightly.

My friend Mike runs the Atlantic City Perl Mongers. I’d been meaning to go to a meeting for a while, but it’s a long drive and it never worked out. Last night I finally had some free time and so I decided to take a little road trip and go.

AC.pm meetings are held at Linode, whose headquarters are in a small office building in Galloway Township near the Atlantic City Airport. I checked Google Maps, and the directions seemed straightforward enough:

1. Cross a bridge from Philadelphia to New Jersey.
2. Take the Atlantic City Expressway to the Garden State Parkway,
3. Take the Parkway north a few miles to Route 561.
4. Turn right on 561, and the office was a mile or two down the road.

The only thing that seemed a bit unusual was that the exit for 561 was on the left, but I’ve got a good sense of direction and I was confident I could figure it out.

I hit a lot of traffic getting through Philadelphia at rush hour, but eventually it cleared and it was smooth sailing down the AC Expressway. I took the exit to go northbound on the Parkway and started looking for a sign for Route 561. Instead, all I saw was a sign for a rest area. I passed that, and immediately started swearing.

You can see what happened on the map below. I was on the yellow road heading north, and the rest stop, the Atlantic City Service Area, is the set of rectangles just to the left of it.

View Larger Map

The Atlantic City Service Area is the craziest highway rest stop I’ve ever seen. That’s because, in addition to the typical gas station and fast food restaurants, it also has a secret exit from the Parkway! You can see it if you pull the map down. Better yet, click on the link to view a larger map to see the full extent of the craziness. Not only was there no sign for 561 on the Parkway itself in either direction, there’s not even a sign inside the rest stop. All you see as a driver is a short access road heading away from the rest area with a traffic light at the end. That light is clearly visible from the Parkway, but you can’t see it until you’ve already gone past the exit.

To make things even more fun, the Atlantic City Service Area is at mile marker 41.4. The next exit heading north on the Parkway isn’t until mile 50. That means if you miss this completely hidden exit, you’ve got to drive over 17 miles (27.5 km) to loop back around and hit it from the southbound lanes.

I finally made it to Linode and had a great time at the meeting. It was fun meeting some of the other Linode employees and getting a tour of their office. Of course this exit is well-known to all of them, and missing it is a rite of passage to anyone visiting their office for the first time from outside the area. One poor guy said he was late for his interview because of it. Mike tells me there are plans to rebuild the Route 561 interchange, such as it is, so this little piece of Weird New Jersey might not be around for too much longer.