Prouts Neck Cliff Walk

Matt & Becky are visiting for the Labor Day weekend and wanted to get out for a hike.  Let's pile everybody in the mini-van and head up to Maine!  Rather than visit the famous (crowded) cliff walk in Ogunquit, Matt found a equally beautiful one in Scarborough.

While we missed Cassandra and Alex most of the day due to some health issues, we did our best to enjoy a day by the sea.

This short hike was a shuttle.  Betsy dropped Matt, Becky and me off near the Black Point Inn to start.

But first, Dominic finds the beach amid grasses much taller than he is.

A beautiful stretch of beach where the Scarborough River empties into Saco Bay.

A classic white picket fence near the beginning of the hike looking northward into the bay.

This is NOT somebody in our party.

I know the tide is low, but he might want to be real careful.

Cliffs.

Cliffs and rocks.

If you had a house on the distant shore, you would have a fantastic ocean view.

We were on a little bridge looking down.  It's a pretty severe drop.  It would be unlikely that one would actually hit the water should they fall.

Matt ventures down to an outcropping.

That green area is another neck of land out on the end of this neck of land.

Most of the hike around the neck put us right on the rocky shoreline.

But some of it was among the low scrub.

"Splash!"

Rocky coastline.
Does this qualify as a "selfie" (see lower right corner).

The land has been eroded away to the path we're on.

We made our way back to the beach where Dominic and Betsy were playing.  Dominic was practicing his "swimming" on the sand.

Between the end of the cliff walk and the parking lot, we walked down a long sandy beach.  There were kite surfers there careening across the bay.  The wind was blowing them our way.  I had to watch a while to see how they were getting back. 

Walk stats:

Total Distance:  2.62 miles

Total Time:  1:16

Average Speed:  2.07 mph

Max altitude:  43 ft

Min altitude:  0 ft (sea level) - doh!

Misery Island Family Paddle

August and September are the BEST months for paddling in the ocean. The water is finally warm enough that you don't have to have neoprene covering most of your body.

Yesterday was an exceptionally perfect day.  I wanted to take some of my family out to Great Misery Island in Salem Sound.  I had been out there a few weeks ago on an AMC trip, but I found a shorter, easier way to get out there and wanted to explore the larger island this time.  There were no clouds in the sky and the hardest part was going be to find a parking spot and launch site in Manchester-by-the-Sea.

Now here's the cool part.  I finally crossed the chasm of the techo-literate and am the owner of a smartphone.  What's cool about it are the interesting apps that actually do make life a little more interesting.  Case in point:  using the phone's GPS tracking to map our paddle adventure.

After driving around for 15 minutes, we found a great put-in at the boat ramp behind the police station in the center of town.

About an hour of paddling and we land at Great Misery Island.  It is managed by the Trustees of Reservations.  We joined this year, so figured why not check out all the cool places they hare.

This is the only picture we have of the 3 of us.  Unfortunately, I did not account for the delay in the camera to actually take the photo.

We found an actually bathroom on the island, then Betsy went exploring a nearby promontory.

Here's a view from the beach out toward the open water of Salem Sound.  Clear sky and calm waters.

The book I was using for a guide said this round-trip was 3.26 miles long.  I'm not sure what kind of miles these were, but certain not the kind used here in the US or by my smartphone.  See all the cool stats from our trip on my ViewRanger account.


I tried making the pictures a little bigger on this post.  Let me know if this size is too big.

See you on the water.