by Judy Handley | Sep 7, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 250: Goldpebbles’ Guide to Falmouth Beaches
Date: Tuesday, September 7, 2021
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 76, Low Temp 63 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Today was a Cape Cod beautiful day with clear deep blue skies and lots of sunshine. It could not have been a more perfect day for Sam, Jonah, Ollie, and I to drive around to every public beach in Falmouth as our end of summer celebration. The Goldpebbles came up with a rating system from 0 to 10 based on sand quality, size of the beach area, and number of tourists among many other things. If you are not from Falmouth, this list will mean nothing to you. But for those of you in Falmouth, you might want to do your own rating of our beautiful beaches. Our list does not match Trip Advisor’s 5 Best Beaches in Falmouth List. Our #10 is their #1! Obviously, choice of beach is very personal. I will list our ratings at the end of this log if you are interested in our opinion on Falmouth’s beautiful beaches.
As we drove from Woods Hole back to Falmouth, we drove by Nobska Lighthouse where we stopped to enjoy the beautiful view. It is not a beach, but I could not drive by without stopping. We had to end our tour by 2:30 pm so we could get Sam home and ready for his 3 pm soccer practice, so we had to move on, but it was a fun stop.
When I got home, I ended the day by finally canning the marinara sauce I made from the San Marzano tomatoes from my garden. Last week I canned 4 pints from 5.5 pounds. This week I got 10 pints from 11 pounds, a little better. But every pint is precious this year. I usually buy about 100 pounds of organic sauce tomatoes from Carrie at Peach Tree Farm in Falmouth but this year she has none. Tomorrow I need to do some research to see if I can buy more somewhere. I can this sauce for Heather and family as they go through a pint per week during the year—14 down and 42 to go.
Tomorrow is first day of school. All three boys are going to new schools. Sam is going to high school, Jonah is going to middle school, and Ollie is off to a new neighborhood elementary school. Here’s hoping they all have a good first day of school.
Now for the Goldpebbles’ Guide to Falmouth Beaches . . .
Menauhant Beach on Nantucket Sound #1–Our adopted home base with a huge beach area divided in half by a channel leading into huge Bourne Pond, lots of parking, a sand bar, and a beautiful view across to Martha’s Vineyard. The only negative was sand quality.
Wood Neck Beach and Little Sippewissett Marsh on Buzzards Bay #2—This was a tough decision for the boys and for me. We all LOVE Wood Neck, so it vacillated between #1 and #2. As we left there, Sam stopped to reflect on just how good it made him feel just being at Wood Neck. The boys love the ocean side at low tide when you have to walk out very far over sand flats to get to the ocean. It is beautiful. They love the lazy river that flows from the marsh into the ocean as the tide goes out. And the marsh offers hours of exploration. Sam is right. This is a very special spot on Planet Earth.
Quissett Beach in Quissett Harbor off Buzzards Bay #3—A walk to The Knob, paths through the woods with great climbing trees, a rocky part of the beach perfect for building rock cairns, very little beach but dogs are allow on a leash, a view of one of the most quintessential harbors in New England, and former summer home of Windbird.
Chapoquoit Beach on Buzzards Bay and Chapoquoit Marsh on West Falmouth Harbor #4—t beach is known as “Chappy” and has become smaller and smaller over the past few years. It is long and narrow and soccer players love to go there after prime beach time to kick soccer balls. Across the street is the Chapoquoit Marsh which is alive with armies of fiddler crabs and a view of beautiful West Falmouth Harbor. The boys ran through the marsh today like wild deer. We haven’t been to the marsh there for three or four years, so it was wonderful to get reacquainted.
Stony Beach in Woods Hole on Buzzards Bay #5—Along time favorite of the Goldpebbles from the days when they attended the Woods Hole Preschool and when Windbird spent two summers in Eel Pond. Stony beach is small and stony until you get a few feet out into the water. It is mostly populated by families with Woods Hole connections. The two jetties offer great opportunities for crabbing and at low tide there is sandbar that kids love to swim out to. There is also a big rock out in the water that older kids climb and jump off. And it is a short walk into the village.
Surf Drive Beach on Nantucket Sounds #6—The boys discovered this beach after moving to Grasmere Drive. It is just over 2 miles to this beach. We sometimes meet Heather and Jed there for a quick dip at the end of a busy day so the boys have labeled it the “Quick Dip Beach”.
Bristol Beach on Nantucket Sound #7—Big beach close to town. The negative is that it is populated by tourists that rent homes in the area for the summer, but it is less crowded than adjacent Falmouth Heights Beach.
Falmouth Heights Beach on Nantucket Sound #8—Less than 2 miles from Grasmere Drive and a beautiful beach, BUT too many tourists for the Goldpebbles.
Megansett Beach in Megansett Harbor off Buzzards Bay #9—Small beach that doesn’t have anything to lure you there unless you live close by. It does have a great pier that older kids jump off of at high tide and has lots of critters to explore that live under the pier.
Old Silver Beach on Buzzards Bay #10—Best sand of any of the Falmouth beaches, but just too crowded to suit the Goldpebbles.
by Judy Handley | Sep 6, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 249: Happy Anniversary and Happy New Year
Date: Monday, September 6, 2021
Weather: Mostly Cloudy with a Little Rain; High Temp 78, Low Temp 59 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Happy 18th Anniversary to Heather and Jed! I was invited over for dinner to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, as well as their anniversary.
I offered to bring the salad and dessert and spent a fair bit of the afternoon getting those things ready. I saw a New York Times suggestion for a beet and barley salad with a date-citrus vinaigrette for Rosh Hashanah and decided to make that. There were many ingredients, many of which I had to go shopping to find, but it was well worth it. It was delicious—a mix of bitter greens topped with beets, barley, fresh figs, grapes, olives, feta cheese, cucumber, celery, red onion, pomegranate seeds, and topped with a lemon and date nectar dressing. Heather requested a poppyseed cake for dessert. That recipe came from the Rectory at St. Paul’s School where Heather attended high school. It is the creamed sherry that makes it so good. Heather added challah and a roasted chicken to complete the feast.
After dinner we sat by a fire in the backyard to complete our our very special evening. The boys have one more day before school starts and we are going to try to do our visit to all of Falmouth’s beaches tomorrow as our last summer hurrah.
by Judy Handley | Sep 5, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 248: Food Shopping and Processing Tomatoes
Date: Sunday, September 5, 2021
Weather: Mostly Cloudy; High Temp 74, Low Temp 67 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
It wasn’t an exciting day, but it was a good day. I am slowly going back to ‘normal’ life from summer Camp Oma gear. Walks with Shadow, doing laundry, shopping for food, picking and processing tomatoes from the garden, and tonight watching a movie. Woohoo! I almost never watch a movie unless I am with the Goldpebbles, but I heard about the new Cinderella movie on NPR and decided to watch it. It is on Amazon Prime and free, so why not? It is certainly a modernized Cinderella story and I really enjoyed the music. “You Gotta Be”, “Somebody to Love”, and “Let’s Get Loud” are just three of the many songs. Camilia Cabello is Cinderella, Nicholas Galizine is the Prince, Idina Menzel is the wicked step-mother, and Billy Porter makes quite a splash as the modern godmother. It was a fun watch.
by Judy Handley | Sep 4, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 247: Jonah’s Soccer Tournament
Date: Saturday, September 4, 2021
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 76, Low Temp 62 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Jonah’s pre-season soccer tournament is this weekend in Fitchburg which is two hours north of here. It was a bit far, but I really wanted to see him play, so I drove up for a 4:30 pm game this afternoon. The weather was gorgeous, and it was a beautiful drive with no traffic. There was no traffic on the highway, that is. I made a stop at the Wrentham Outlet Mall on the way up to return a pair of pants I bought for myself at the Columbia Outlet last week. The line of traffic going into the mall was long and it took great patience to find a parking spot. Getting back on the highway, the traffic back up was even longer. Not sure why it felt like everyone in Massachusetts was there shopping today.
Heather and Jed’s bad start to their camping weekend continued when they arrived at their camping spot last night after dark. They discovered that the batteries were dead in their headlamps and they had no light to find the water faucet they needed for cooking. The firewood was all soaking wet but even if it were dry, they couldn’t find their lighter and they had no matches with them. Then there was more drama. Jonah’s good friend Luke and his mother Anna were driving up for the tournament and they were going to camp next to the Goldstones. But just before they got there, Anna’s BMW simply stopped running in the middle of the highway. She was able to get it out of the lane of traffic, but then the car simply would not start again. She had points for a free hotel room, so they are not camping this weekend but staying in a hotel. No one can look at her car until Tuesday, so this morning she just packed everything into the car they loaned her and carried on. By the time I arrived this afternoon, both families had worked out their problems and are hopefully going to enjoy tonight and tomorrow before heading home.
Jonah scored his team’s only goal in the first game today, but the game I attended didn’t go so well for them. Jonah was a bit upset after the game but seemed to be bouncing back by the time I left. Hopefully tomorrow’s noontime game will go their way.
I got home in time to run over to say goodbye to Andrew, Lara, and kids. They are heading home to Larchmont tomorrow morning early. They found out today that the schools there will not be opening this week as most of the schools suffered water damage during the storm this week. But they had already planned to head home, so they enjoyed one last day out on the water and will go ahead and leave early tomorrow. They will be returning for long weekends this fall and I’ll look forward to seeing them again when they return.
by Judy Handley | Sep 3, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 246: Last Official Day of Camp Oma 2021; Wine Group
Date: Friday, September 3, 2021
Weather: Mostly Sunny; High Temp 73, Low Temp 58 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Today was the last official day of Camp Oma for the summer of 2021, but the boys and I have one more thing we want to do together on Monday or Tuesday before school starts on Wednesday. We want to visit the eight public beaches in Falmouth and end up at our favorite, Menauhant, for the last swim before school starts.
Today we had lunch at Shipwrecked which, until this summer, was the BBC. It is right across the street from Falmouth Heights Beach and has outdoor seating facing the ocean. The service was slow and the boys didn’t think the food was quite as good as when it was the BBC, but they loved the huge soft pretzel they got for an appetizer.
Sam had soccer practice at 3 pm, but we had enough time to go for a swim at Menauhant and get ice cream at Smitty’s before taking Sam to practice. I then took Ollie and Jonah home to help pack for their weekend camping near the location of Jonah’s soccer tournament. When we got home, we saw the van parked up on the street with Jed on the ground looking under the van. Uh oh. Apparently, there was a transmission fluid leak, and they were not going to be able to take the van camping. I stayed around long enough for them to decide whether my Honda Fit or their Honda Civic had the most room for all the paraphernalia you need for a weekend of camping. Their Honda won, so I traveled on to my next activity.
I met with my wine group on the deck of one of the members. We were all to bring a wine whose name matched our first or last initial and an appetizer also beginning with the initial of choice. I brought a California Pinot Noir from the ‘J’ vineyard in Sonoma County. It was the best Pinot Noir I had ever had and other wine group members who drink only darker red wines also liked it. My appetizer was jalapeno poppers, beginning with a ‘J’ for Judy but sounding like an ‘H’ for Handley. I’m really not much of a wine drinker but joined the group so I could learn more about wines. I love the group and learn a little more with each gathering.
by Judy Handley | Sep 2, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 245: Extreme Weather, Extreme People, Extreme Stress
Date: Thursday, September 2, 2021
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, Heavy Rain Overnight; High Temp 74, Low Temp 55 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
In the mid-1950’s MAD magazine invented Alfred E. Neuman and his motto, “What me worry?” Recently that motto pops up in my mind often because there are so many things to worry about. Extreme and unprecedented are words that are to describe what seems to be the new norm. Extreme weather, people with extreme views, and parents under extreme stress seem to be everywhere, all the time. As I was sending last night’s log, my phone came to life with the emergency signal warning of a tornado. I stayed up long enough to get another tornado warning. I listened carefully to the towns that might be affected, and Falmouth was one of them. But the pattern of the towns listed made me think the tornado was headed slightly west of East Falmouth. I made the decision to not go to the basement to sleep, but to be on high alert in case I needed to head that way. After I fell asleep, I was awakened with yet another alert. The tornado touched down north and east of here, so my assumptions were wrong. It could just as well have been here. Next time Shadow and I will sleep in the basement. The fact that this kind of weather has become something that seems to happen often is really scary. As near neighbor Lara Dearman said this morning, “The extreme weather events seem almost Biblical.” The summer home they have spent the last year remodeling was partially flooded last night and friends in their New York hometown of Larchmont had completely flooded homes, no electricity, and some could not find their cars as they had floated away. Things were fine here at the cottage, but the lines of debris in the driveway that looked like waves were an indication that a lot of water had flowed through last night.
Heather, Jed, and boys spent the night on camp cots in their basement and only Ollie slept through the whole thing. He was already asleep when they decided to head to the basement, so Sam carried him down. This morning Ollie was quite confused when he woke up in the basement asking how in the world he got there and why. But the things that happened to us here were just an aggravation or something that can easily be repaired. Others in the path of Hurricane Ida and her aftermath lost their homes and everything they owned. Some lost their lives. Then there are the fires raging in the West. Extreme weather is a reality to be dealt with.
I won’t even get started writing about the extreme beliefs of more and more people in this country. But it is certainly a worry. And then there are all the parents of children in this country who are stretched and stressed to the max in figuring out how to help their kids negotiate a Covid world as safely as possible. With school starting next week here, that stress level is rising. So it was truly a breath of fresh air to see something Jo posted on Facebook. It was a beautiful landscape painting that exudes peace and serenity. Jo had stumbled upon the painting online and was immediately entranced.
Then she read the caption. It was of the exact location where she and Justin were married atop Eagle Rock in Topanga Canyon in southern California. Taking time to embrace the beauty in this world can give a little relief to all the other stresses. Thanks, Jo, for sharing this with us at a time when thoughts of peace and serenity are so needed and at a time when we all need to be reminded of just why we must push harder for climate change legislation. We have to do what we can to protect this beautiful world.
This afternoon I took the Goldpebbles to Staples to do some school supply shopping and tomorrow we will celebrate the last day of Camp Oma Summer 2021. We have had a wonderful, laid-back summer but it is now time to transition to school and fall soccer season. Heather, Jed, and boys are headed Fitchburg up near the New Hampshire border for the weekend for Jonah’s first two-day soccer tournament of the season. I will drive up for one of the games, probably on Sunday. They plan to come home on Monday just in time for Rosh Hashanah, Jewish New Year, and the first day of school on Wednesday.
