Hi, Darr,
greetings back to you.
I'm not a native of NJ, for a time I wasn't sure there were any. Many years ago a friend of mine did a study of the demand for cigarettes. He worked very hard to estimate the number of people actually residing in each state, went so far as to work up data on interstate movement of college students. He found that NJ was a net exporter of students (sent more than it received) to every other state in the union, including Alaska and Hawaii. And we know that graduates tend to light near where they got the last degree.
Still and all, traffic aside I've come to like the state. Its rather prettier than a visitor who'd seen only Newark airport and environs would think. But your old neighborhood has been built up a bit since you left and there's much more traffic.
Cheers,
Dan
George, the Pine Barrens are in range for the OP, but this isn't their most photogenic time of year. Now, if we had a good snowfall they'd be very interesting.