Plum Island

July 26, 2021

Plum Island

We wandered to Plum Island, located in Newburyport, Massachusetts. It took us less than an hour to get to the PI. It was our first time to this area and we were excited to try a new beach.

We should have taken serious notice of the sign at the entrance that mentioned the green heads (aka horse flies) were still around.

We decided on going down to the Sandy Point State Reservation which is located at the north end of Plum Island. Across the water you can see Ipswich and Crane Beach which is not that far away. To get down to the end it is a 6 mile drive over mostly hard pack roads. You cannot drive very fast or you will kick up a lot of dust. On one side of the road is the ocean and the other is the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge. Marshes as far as the eye can see in a lot of the area and so many birds. I was in awe of how many birds we saw. We have Catbirds here at our house but never saw as many as I did on our drive down to the beach. Lots of Tree Swallows as well and that should have been our second hint that all would not be well on the beach....

We got the last spot in the very small parking area which did not have much in the way of amenities but there was a large porta-potty. We hiked down to the beach. It is not a bad walk and when we got to the end of the path we saw that we only had a few other souls with us on the beach. It was very peaceful.

Almost feels like being at the end of the world

We set up our spot and headed for the water. I could not believe how many whole sand dollars I saw. In Maine it is rare to see whole ones on the shore or in the shallow water but here we were seeing a bunch of them.

For me finding whole sand dollars is like winning the lottery! I love them and have found sand dollars that are smaller than a pencil eraser. My plan is to put together a display of all the sand dollars that I have collected over the many years of beaching combing that we have done.

All told we collected 8 whole sand dollars in various sizes and a few other interesting shells. I like using the large clam shells as dishes for my odds and ends in my craft room.

Our beachcombing treasures

Shhh! Gerry is snoozing...

So what you do not see is that we are completely covered up! The green heads and black flies LOVED us! I am not sure what it was about us that they liked so much but we really drew them to us. We usually like to read on the beach, play backgammon and take the occasional catnap. The bugs were so bad that Gerry got in a brief snooze but no reading was done and we had to keep shooing away the flies. Being in the water was the only way to keep the bugs off us. Thankfully the water was really nice and we were also able to take a nice long walk down the beach. We learned a valuable lesson on this excursion - do not go to marshy beaches during the green head season which is mid-July to mid-August. A friend told me that their season was from the first full moon in July to the first full moon in August. We will keep that in mind!

We ended our beach time at 3:30pm and then headed out to visit a couple of friends to see their new house that they just bought in Plum Island. They have a super cute cottage right near the south beaches with easy walking to the beach.

For dinner we head into Newburyport and ended up at Michael's Harborside for dinner on the deck which had a nice view of the harbor. An after dinner walk around the shops in downtown with gelato for dessert from Dolce Freddo rounded out of day. All in all quite a nice time was had by both of us and I am sure we will be back!