There's little wonder New Jersey gets little respect. It's been the butt of countless jokes on the late shows; The Sopranos showed a lot of the grottier spots, including the Badda Bing Club; and its reputation as a for-real Mob burial ground was no help either.

The real New Jersey: In photos

Before leaving for the Garden State I asked several people who'd never been there what they imagined New Jersey to be like.

"Industrial,"

"Dirty."

"Not a clue."

There's little wonder New Jersey gets little respect. It's been the butt of countless jokes on the late shows; The Sopranos showed a lot of the grottier spots, including the Badda Bing Club; and its reputation as a for-real Mob burial ground was no help either.

It could just be a ploy by New Yorkers to keep the place to themselves.

From the lighthouse at Sandy Hook, across from Manhattan, to Cape May and the Delaware River in the south, the state is a treasure chest of natural wonders and quaint towns and villages.

From Sandy Hook's lighthouse -- set up in 1764 and the oldest in the U.S. -- you could barely make out New York through the sullen fog and rain. But that's one of the reasons the lighthouse is where it is -- to guide ships to the great city's channels through weather thick and clear. And just to remind visitors of what a strategic site it is, Fort Hancock still stands as a reminder of more dangerous times, when the British and later the Germans were threats to shipping.

Two hundred kilometres to the south, the lighthouse and fortifications at Cape May served a similar purpose, guarding the mouth of the Delaware and access to the port of Philadelphia, Pa.

From Cape May to Sandy Hook are reminders that Jerseyites not only prize their hard-won freedoms but value their natural resources.

The massive Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge is a case in point. It's divided into two large areas and is a favourite stopping point for migrating birds -- and birders. One of our group counted 21 species without even leaving our SUV, which did a 13-km loop of the esuarine wetlands, where the sea meets fresh water and where the soaring casinos of Atlantic City serve as a backdrop.

We even saw a deer, who looked at us as though we were the tourist attractions.

Everywhere we went there seemed to be another testament to the area's commitment to preseverve its natural heritage.

At the nearby Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Reasearch Centre in Tuckerton, the murky world of pirates and sneakboxes was explored. Pirates are pretty self-explanatory, but sneakboxes are something else. They are tiny boats with very little draft that the locals used to sneak up on, and kill, ducks that flew in by the hundreds of thousands every year.

The Wetlands Institute, in the Cape May area, is dedicated -- among other ecological crusades -- to helping the local turtles, who get mashed by passing cars. The institute expects 400 of the animals will die on the roads this summer. The institute's scientists econourage the public to bring in the crushed turtles so that eggs can be removed from the females and incubated, thereby fixing some of the damage wrought by man.

On Cape May, there's a state park that becomes the focal point of hundreds of raptors such as ospreys and peregrine falcons who view the bird migrations in the fall and spring as a buffet. (A word of warning. The beaches are gorgeous -- for sunbathing. But vicious riptides make the water extremely unsafe for swimmers. People should stay out of the water unless they are at a guarded beach.)

The village of Cape May is a real delight, filled with restored homes and attractions and home to whale-watching excursions. We were a little late to spot the whales but dolphins were cavorting in abundance. (Note: Don't drive yourself crazy trying to photograph them. By the time you train your camera on them, they've disappeared.)

Enough flora and fauna. Time for a walk on the sorta wild side -- Atlantic City.

The city itself isn't large -- just 45,000 souls, and the metro area bumps that figure up to 250,000.

AC, as locals call it, was once a family destination, but now gambling is the big attraction, and along with it some tacky and wacky architecture (sorry, Donald Trump). The Trump Taj Mahal, for instance, with its white elephants and golden spires is a bit over the top, but oddly enough its rather good restaurants like Plate are elegant.

It's rather disconcerting to be leaving the Tropicana hotel at 8 in the morning and seeing zombie-like gamblers slouched at the slot machines. It seemed pretty boring but one of our group did walk away with more than $500 the night before.

One more thing: You practically need a road map to find your way to your hotel room. Even a lot of hotel employees seemed confused by the Tropicana's layout, which stretches over a street.

While the casinos and hotels are in good shape, the surrounding area looks rather rough. One can only surmise that the money the state and city would get from gamblers is going elsewhere. Or it could be a clever plan to keep the players indoors.

The famed boardwalk is fun, if not for the tacky gift shops, then for people-watching.

And the Steel Pier amusement park off the boardwalk and right behind the Taj Mahal is a blast from the past, with its giant ferris wheel and beautiful Italian-built carousel, and more modern, stomach-wrenching rides. But it may not be there long. Trump owns the land and is thinking of expanding his casino empire in its direction.

A complete contrast is the west of the state, near the state capital, Trenton. Its lovely, green-wrapped roads lead through bucolic villages and towns. We stayed a couple of nights at the Inn at Lambertville Station, a complex forged from a railway station and just across a small bridge from New Hope, in Pennsylvania.

From there we could easily visit Trenton and its Barracks Museum, where we lerned about the rough life of a revolutionary soldier, and the Delaware River crossing immortalized by Gen. George Washington. On Dec. 25, 1776, after being driven across the river into Pennsylvania by the British, Washington's small army spirited its way back into New Jersey, and marched the 14 km to Trenton to surprise and defeat a Hessian garrison. The victory galvanized a demoralized fighting force that was on the verge of disbanding and forged the Americans into a real army.

The park immortalizing the crossing is remarkably modest, but the setting nonetheless pulsates with history.