WILDWOOD - Most summers, Roy Greenhow and his family drive from their home near Birmingham, Ala., to their favorite vacation spot on the Gulf of Mexico.
But this year, with the worst oil spill in U.S. history fouling gulf beaches, Greenhow aimed the SUV northeast and traveled 16 hours to the Jersey Shore instead.
He feels bad for businesses on the gulf and hopes to return there, but he couldn't risk disappointing his three children on their only vacation of the season, he said.
"The kids want to go to the beach, and we wanted to get away from all that's going on down there. My wife and I needed a break," said Greenhow, 42, an accountant who visited the Shore several times as a child.
The Greenhows usually go to Gulf Shores, Ala. But the state's department of health has warned bathers not to swim in waters off the resort - on what is fondly known as "the redneck Riviera" - because of the oil.
Lured by memories of its amusement-filled boardwalk, Greenhow looked up Wildwood on the Internet. He said he's noticed the license plates and drawls of others from Dixie during his weeklong stay.
Local tourism officials can't provide hard numbers, but cars from Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and other states below the Mason-Dixon Line appear to be in greater supply at the Shore this summer.
"I'm hearing a lot more southern accents this year," said Susan Martin, a reservations manager at the Golden Inn in Avalon. "And I just love the sound of it."
There has been an increase in the number of Southerners booking rooms, Martin said. They don't say why they are coming, she said, but many have identified themselves as first-timers.
The newcomers are finding their way largely on their own, say those in the tourism industry. New Jersey this year eliminated its national multimillion-dollar Shore promotional campaign, leaving resort towns complaining even before the gulf disaster about their inability to compete with rivals such as Ocean City, Md.
Diane Wieland, director of the Cape May County Department of Tourism, and her colleagues "feel very bad about what is happening to tourism down in the gulf," she said. "We certainly haven't been going after that southern business per se."
But Cape May County's "Escape to the Jersey Cape" website has seen a nearly 5 percent increase in visits from users in Gulf Coast states this year, she said. There is no way to know if it also has seen an uptick in hits from those who previously vacationed in the gulf region.
