By the Sea: A Vacation in a Day

When is a day at the beach not exactly a day at the beach? Sharks! Stinging jellyfish! Rip currents!  Horseneck Beach has been closed temporarily for all these in recent weeks. I wasn’t there at those times, though I have been on the beach when the lifeguards made everyone leave due to a possible storm that never appeared.

Last year we saw what we thought might be a Portuguese man o’war lying on the beach (the tentacles can still sting apparently) but it turned out to be the remains of a balloon, which we retrieved for the trash. Folks, please don’t bring balloons to the beach. They will inevitably get away and into the water and some poor sea creature will ingest it. I have not seen any sharks and would like to keep it that way. Though since I only go wading, not swimming, if I’m attacked by a shark we’re all in trouble. And rip currents can be very dangerous indeed.

 Fogland Beach in Tiverton is a much calmer place. It’s actually a cove-like body of water where the Sakonnet River flows into the sea. The main threat here seems to be getting clobbered by a passing windsurfer, though I haven’t actually seen this happen. There are usually half a dozen of these strong-armed surfers skimming the water near the swimming area. I can see the attraction. The last time I was there the wind was too strong to keep an umbrella up. At this point, I’ve given up on getting a huge beach umbrella to stay up in the sand and have settled on simply holding up one of those big golf umbrellas, which works very well for shelter on the beach.

Another purpose an umbrella serves is protection from sea gulls. Last year at Horseneck a gull swooped down and ripped a peanut butter sandwich right out of my hand, clipping my thumb in the process. Since their specialty is stealth attacks from above, the umbrella trick works well. My daughter always laughs when I say that coming from the Midwest, I used to think sea gulls were exotic creatures. Once you see them hanging around restaurant dumpsters, they don’t have much glamour.

In mid-July at Horseneck, we saw a piping plover mother guarding three little chicks. They were awfully close to where people were sitting. Though most people were not paying any attention, I was afraid that someone would accidentally step on one of them. The piping plovers do seem to be rebounding, which is good. Time to watch my favorite short Pixar cartoon on Disney Plus. Simply called “Piper” it’s an animated five-minute feature about a mother sandpiper trying to teach her chick how to catch his own food. OK, it’s not a documentary, but it is just so cute I keep returning to it as a pick-me-up. On the next beach visit, we saw least terns in the roped off area. The parent birds were flying around frantically chasing gulls (them again!) away from the terns’ nests. It looked exhausting.

What is it about being near the water that we so enjoy? For me it’s not the mid-day sun, which I can’t tolerate any more, but later in the day, I enjoy the feeling of being somewhere so different geographically, even if it’s just 45 minutes away, like a vacation in a day.  It’s the fresh sea breeze, a wide and long expanse of sand mirrored by a wide sky, the hypnotic sound and sight of the surf, the call of sea birds, the dunes with their beach roses, and just seeing a great diversity of people all enjoying themselves.

Speaking of the sea, Newport, which calls itself the City by the Sea (as if it’s the only one), seems to have as many tourists as ever, but for me it remains a prime spot for a mini-vacation in an afternoon. This year the kite festival in July was somewhat disappointing. There were lots of kites but we didn’t see any events such as the contests in past years where you could watch synchronized kite flying (very impressive). Still, Brenton Point is always enjoyable and I never tire of gawking at the mansions on Ocean Drive. A nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t really want to live there.