The Sunset
As mentioned: visiting my Mom a couple of weeks ago on the Jersey Shore, and the house my brother rented for his family came with a rooftop deck that was perched up higher than any of the other decks for a ways around. That made for a fun view during the sunset, so I went to get some pics.
Yeah yeah, I know, there is nothing more pedestrian than Pictures of the Sunset. I wanted to take some, though, because LBI is not the most aggressively scenic place ever, but it's home, and it can be pretty (even if it's a thoroughly over-built island). It's MY childhood summer sunsets and beach at twilight, in other words.
I liked the above for the contrast between the almost uniform grey of the houses in the foreground, and the silver of the water of the bay, with the sky above.
The one thing I regretted about this most recent trip was that I didn't get to go for a walk on the beach, which is another one of those activities deeply ingrained in my formative years. The best is ALWAYS to go for a walk on the beach at twilight, when it's cooled down, and especially when it happens to be low tide, which is the best for walking. And in fact, we were getting low low tide at about 7pm, which would have been perfect. But, there was family to hang out with and my Mom's birthday to celebrate, so, next time.
I liked being able to capture the moment when the light hits the curl of the wave and you see the green of the water, though.
Our beach (meaning specifically the beach right off our street) is HUGE this year (ahem, relatively speaking). This is very changeable, so it's not always huge, but it's interesting, because -- again, nostalgia -- in my childhood memory, the beach was much bigger than it seemed like it has been in the past couple of decades. And you get to wondering, why is that? Well, okay, yes -- barrier island, I know, this is the nature of things, beaches move, and erode. And in our case, you'll see below that we have some pretty good dunes, which were not nearly as big or as wide as that in my childhood. (This is a good thing; this is the result of years of trying to build them up bigger and wider and with more dunegrass, to act as protection against storms.)
But this year the beach was wide again. Nobody really knows why. We think it's because over the last several years, the town on the island just to the north of us has been undergoing a project where they are replenishing their beach sand... and it being a barrier island, the ocean helpfully takes that sand and just redistributes it to the beaches to the south, like ours. Thank you, Surf City! (Did I ever tell you the hilarious story of when that project started, and they were getting the sand for the beach by dredging it from offshore? Except for some unexplained reason they appeared not to have put it through a screen or anything before they dumped it on the beach? And only THEN discovered that they had also dredged up old and in some cases unexploded mines from WWII, which had been disposed off by dumping them offshore? Ha ha, that was a lot of fun; just before the season started they had to close several miles of beach and sweep it with metal detectors to make sure they found all that stuff before they could let people on.)
But I digress -- here are some shots looking north, and then south, of the beach at twilight.
You can see how many people are wise to the fact that THIS is the best time to be on the beach, especially when it's low tide. I particularly like how the water, in a way, has a brighter sheen to it than the sky at this time of day.
In the second pic, the largest jetty is actually a half-mile from our street, and it has always been The Standard Goal of the twilight beach walk. Just far enough. (When I was a very little kid it seemed like an impossibly long distance, of course.)
At about this point was when my brother said, "Hey, can you see the lighthouse from here with that camera's zoom?" It was an interesting question. The answer was: Yes, blurrily, but there it is. 10 miles away.
Anyway, the sunset gave us a nice show. It's amazing how quickly it happens, how at the very end you can literally watch the last sliver of sun disappear.
And then we ate hot dogs and hamburgers and drank beer until we burst. The end.
Next: seagulls and sandpipers (or, what passes for Wildlife).
Yeah yeah, I know, there is nothing more pedestrian than Pictures of the Sunset. I wanted to take some, though, because LBI is not the most aggressively scenic place ever, but it's home, and it can be pretty (even if it's a thoroughly over-built island). It's MY childhood summer sunsets and beach at twilight, in other words.
I liked the above for the contrast between the almost uniform grey of the houses in the foreground, and the silver of the water of the bay, with the sky above.
The one thing I regretted about this most recent trip was that I didn't get to go for a walk on the beach, which is another one of those activities deeply ingrained in my formative years. The best is ALWAYS to go for a walk on the beach at twilight, when it's cooled down, and especially when it happens to be low tide, which is the best for walking. And in fact, we were getting low low tide at about 7pm, which would have been perfect. But, there was family to hang out with and my Mom's birthday to celebrate, so, next time.
I liked being able to capture the moment when the light hits the curl of the wave and you see the green of the water, though.
Our beach (meaning specifically the beach right off our street) is HUGE this year (ahem, relatively speaking). This is very changeable, so it's not always huge, but it's interesting, because -- again, nostalgia -- in my childhood memory, the beach was much bigger than it seemed like it has been in the past couple of decades. And you get to wondering, why is that? Well, okay, yes -- barrier island, I know, this is the nature of things, beaches move, and erode. And in our case, you'll see below that we have some pretty good dunes, which were not nearly as big or as wide as that in my childhood. (This is a good thing; this is the result of years of trying to build them up bigger and wider and with more dunegrass, to act as protection against storms.)
But this year the beach was wide again. Nobody really knows why. We think it's because over the last several years, the town on the island just to the north of us has been undergoing a project where they are replenishing their beach sand... and it being a barrier island, the ocean helpfully takes that sand and just redistributes it to the beaches to the south, like ours. Thank you, Surf City! (Did I ever tell you the hilarious story of when that project started, and they were getting the sand for the beach by dredging it from offshore? Except for some unexplained reason they appeared not to have put it through a screen or anything before they dumped it on the beach? And only THEN discovered that they had also dredged up old and in some cases unexploded mines from WWII, which had been disposed off by dumping them offshore? Ha ha, that was a lot of fun; just before the season started they had to close several miles of beach and sweep it with metal detectors to make sure they found all that stuff before they could let people on.)
But I digress -- here are some shots looking north, and then south, of the beach at twilight.
You can see how many people are wise to the fact that THIS is the best time to be on the beach, especially when it's low tide. I particularly like how the water, in a way, has a brighter sheen to it than the sky at this time of day.
In the second pic, the largest jetty is actually a half-mile from our street, and it has always been The Standard Goal of the twilight beach walk. Just far enough. (When I was a very little kid it seemed like an impossibly long distance, of course.)
At about this point was when my brother said, "Hey, can you see the lighthouse from here with that camera's zoom?" It was an interesting question. The answer was: Yes, blurrily, but there it is. 10 miles away.
Anyway, the sunset gave us a nice show. It's amazing how quickly it happens, how at the very end you can literally watch the last sliver of sun disappear.
And then we ate hot dogs and hamburgers and drank beer until we burst. The end.
Next: seagulls and sandpipers (or, what passes for Wildlife).