Here are the pictures from my delightful afternoon in Connecticut by the sea. Beverly, John and I took a long walk through the marsh and onto the beach, wandering along a side path first. Sadly, invasive phragmites have taken over and spoiled much of the view Tim & I enjoyed when we came here five years ago. See that post here: sunlight by the sea. And it wasn’t long before we found another invasive species landing on our clothing, the newly arrived spotted lanternfly. Sigh.
I have not included pictures of either of them, and have no pictures of the beach itself because it was covered with people! But we made the best of it and found many little treasures to appreciate.
On the trip up to Connecticut we came the “inland” route to avoid the city traffic, through the Blue Ridge and Poconos mountains. Lovely goldenrod was blooming in abundance along the highway.
John is a botanist so we learned a bit about the different kinds of marsh and dune grasses and how they occupy different zones, depending on if the marsh is receding away from the sea or staying in place for a while. It will be interesting to see how this marsh deals with climate change.
I miss my beach roses and was so grateful to see a few on this walk. Lots of berries for migrating birds.
To avoid staring at people we walked the wrack line and found a few interesting items.
And of course, Beverly is a geologist so we found ourselves spending a lot of time at the glacial moraine at the end of the beach. In our younger years we might have been found climbing all over these boulders but decided to play it safe and not risk slipping and breaking any bones.
Listening to the waves was soothing, and the more we looked around the more there was to observe.
On the way back we found more beach roses and a cute laughing gull standing on the sand far enough away from any person, making possible my only gull picture of the afternoon. There were some gulls flying overhead, but too fast for me to capture.
But, not to worry, we were headed for another beach after a couple of errands and refreshments. There were more than enough gulls there, with no people around, to keep me happy for a couple of hours.