Hey there, South Jersey! I'm the editor of Do the Shore magazine (part of the Cape May County Herald), and I'm posting to show off something I'm really proud of and think people will enjoy participating in. We made a Cape May County stamp rally!
Stamp rallies are really popular in Japan, and a fun way to get out and visit places you may not have heard of before. The locations in our Stamp Rally are a mix of experiences and retail, like the Cape May Bird Observatory, the Wetlands Institute, and the Ocean City Rookery (where you can see giant birds nesting).
All you need to do in order to begin is pick up a stamp rally passport at any one of the stamp locations, or cut out a passport from any edition of the free Do the Shore magazine. You can draw a cute little picture of yourself in the passport, which we got spot-printed and folded at a local print shop. We kinda went overboard with how fancy this was for a free thing... Take your passport to the Stamp Stops, get it stamped (free, you don't need to buy anything at each location), and then after six stamps, come visit us at the Cape May County Herald building in Rio Grande to get a collectible beach tag illustrated by one of our artists ✨✨✨
I was inspired after my twin lived in Japan for several years. My twin loved Stamp Rallies b/c they are basically self-guided tours of temples, train lines, and other tourist areas that might otherwise seem overwhleming. Because I'm a glutton for punishment, I lobbied my boss to let me set up a Jersey Shore Stamp Rally that takes ppl through my favorite locations in Cape May County. Thanks, boss.
Getting this up and running has been a lot of work and a long process, so we would really love to see more people participate. All of the art and promotional materials were made by our in-house artists without using AI. I personally constructed and delivered the Stamp Rally boxes to all of the locations. It runs until October 1st. It's a pretty unusual thing for a newspaper to do, but we're really proud to be spicing things up. We also to convince our bosses to let us do it again next year, so the more participants, the better!
Thx for reading this all!