Living in New Jersey, the common pre-weekend summer refrain is, “are you going to the Shore?”  For those who only know NJ through the eyes of Newark Airport, we do have miles and miles of great beaches!  Yet not everyone in the “The Garden State” grew up at the Shore.  In fact, we gave some great lakes include Shongum Lake in my childhood hometown of Randolph.

This time of year we are always reminded of what it would be like to live on/near the water.  And since not every community has the Atlantic or Pacific in the backyard I wanted to check out some great waterfront homes that don’t have force you to track sand back into your car.  I found this one, which could be the ultimate “not-at-the-Shore” waterfront home in Mercer Island, Wash.  But that’s not all:

• There are nearly 2000 riverfront homes on coldwellbanker.com including this $1.99 million home on the Olentangy River in Powell, Ohio.
• There are more than 3000 lakefront homes listed on the site including this one for $1.1 million in Rogers, Ark.
• There are more than 11,000 properties with “pond” in the listing description headlined by the $28 million former Henry Clay Frick Estate in Alpine, NJ.
• There are nearly 4000 homes for sale with “stream” or “brook” in the description.  And I loved this one in Aspen going for $6.12 million which has a stream, waterfall and pond included!

And, of course, we cannot forget the pool.  There are more than 43,000 homes on coldwellbanker.com for sale with pools, but unfortunately none come with the “floating basketball hoop” like the one played we played on for hours at the Yazdan’s while growing up.

If you survived without the Shore, I’d love to hear about your memories “on the water.”