Yesterday was the first sunny day in a while so we packed a picnic lunch to have in the car and decided to drive to First Encounter Beach as we thought it might be really pretty there. Were we in for a treat! (Click on blog link for more photos.)
As we drove in, we could see the colorful kites way up in the sky. It was really windy and the kite surfers were all out on the water. It was beautiful to watch them surfing back and forth along the beach with their multi-colored kites. Look at that surfer above jump high off a wave! Wow!
The photo above reminds me of one of those hot air balloon festivals!
When we went for a walk on Coast Guard Beach on Tuesday of this week, we were surprised at the amount of debris that had gotten washed up on the beach during the storm the weekend before. You can see some of the large items on the beach. The beach is strewn with old trees, limbs and branches all the way down.
In my post earlier this week, I thought that the debris was from the dunes, but in walking down the beach it was apparent that it had all gotten washed up during the storm. Even the area marked off for the Piping Plovers had washed away, the tide had been so high.
If you do take a walk on the beach, take in mind that the tides have been very high and you might not be able to walk very far at high tide.
It was so much fun to watch these two Northern Flickers at our suet feeder. The 2nd Flicker waited patiently on top of the feeder while the 1st one enjoyed a suet lunch.
Isn’t that Flicker just adorable as he looks over the side for his turn?
A few years ago, the National Park Service installed a moveable bridge by the salt pond near the Visitors Center in Eastham. It goes up and down with the tide and you can usually get across, unless the tide is extremely high.
You can see how high the tide was the amount of grass that washed up by the bridge. That is where the trail usually is. It is best to hike this trail closer to low tide or mid-tide. If the tide gets really high, the trail gets very muddy and washed out in some places.
It is one of our favorite hikes as it is so diverse… along the edge of the salt pond, across another bridge over the salt marsh, up to an overlook where you can see Nauset Marsh out to Coast Guard Beach, through the woods and then back on another bridge over a little pond in the woods. Each part is so pretty.
Yesterday was a beautiful day on Cape Cod… sunny and windy. We took a ride to Coast Guard Beach to picnic in the car and then take a walk on the beach. It was pretty warm at our house so we didn’t even think of bringing our winter parkas. That was a mistake. (Click on blog link to see other photo.) With the water temps about 42 degrees and a brisk wind, it was very chilly by the water. We only walked a bit down the beach as we knew it would be much colder walking back.
We were surprised by the huge piles of debris in front of the dunes by the entrance trail to the beach. The tides were pretty high last weekend during he storm. Did they wash out this much debris from the top of the dunes? It was about 2.5 hours past high tide when we got to the beach but the water was still really high. You could only walk toward Nauset Spit as the beach toward Naught Light was still under water.
Cape Cod daily articles on the wonderful Cape Cod places to hike, experience and photograph. A Cape Cod Outdoor Adventure Series.
