This is what low tide looks like in winter

My favorite beach for walking, as my frequent readers probably know, is the Delaware Bay Beach in North Cape May, NJ. (I've been coming here all of my life and even before, I suspect!) Summer on this beach is great for sunning and relaxing, but fall, winter, and spring are for walking, making Gladys chase her special beach toy, and shooting pictures. A few weeks ago, Fred and Gladys and I managed to fit in a cold and windy beachwalk on the bay. As luck would have it, we wandered down at low tide. This means a wider beach for toy-chasing and more oddities washed up from the depths of the bay.

Fred and Gladys wait for me as I shoot photos from the street.

I mentioned it was a windy day. Gladys was wearing her new snowman kerchief, and experienced many wardrobe malfunctions.

The best birding is in spring and fall, when so many species fly by on their migrations north and south. Some live here with us and even hang out on the beach in winter. (By the way, if you are interested in birding in Cape May County and beyond, check out Don Freiday's blog: http://freidaybird.blogspot.com)

Some gulls stay for the winter.

A plump little sandpiper/plover/sanderling--I'm never quite sure which. They're all in Cape May.

This fall we New Jersey beach lovers (avian and human alike) experienced anxiety during the approach of Hurricane (or Superstorm) Sandy. Some of us received gut-wrenching bad news, but others of us were spared. A few days before it hit, all eyes were on Cape May as the storms were expected to converge there. As we all know now, Sandy brought her devastation ashore a little further north. Cape May was, for the most part, spared, but I suspect most from the Cape May region watched the news with horror as the images from Seaside and Staten Island, Brick and Brooklyn, appeared in the media: "Man, that could have been us."

Fred and Gladys head for the beach.

There were some issues at my favorite beach as a result of the enormous storm. For the first time I can remember, the trail from the street to the beach was purposely moved over a few feet. Bulldozers did this after the storm, and I suspect the move has something to do with the new storm drain visible in the first photo above. There was a dinky drain there before, but this gargantuan seems to mean business. But anyway, I'm still getting used to the new trail, as silly as that may seem.

There was some beach erosion , too. These cliffs have always been here, but used to be much smaller. I remember when I was younger my parents could drive along Beach Drive and see me and my dog Bambi from the car. That's nowhere near possible now as those cliffs are taller than I am.

The dune cliffs, post-Sandy

Nonetheless, the beauty of the beach in winter remains. I think this is a pretty cool close-up of one of the jetties. Low-tide allowed me to get in close to the moss-covered rocks. The green moss and the charcoal-colored rocks were the most exciting color palette of the morning, I think.

At high-tide sometimes, these rocks are completely covered. P.S. The green parts are very slippery.

I mentioned that weird things wash up on the bay. Here's an oyster-encrusted tire:

Those oysters will cling to anything.

It was cold and windy that day, the moist kind of wind that you find at the beach. This is the kind of wind that will cause actual pain to ungloved hands shooting photos or flying kites, for instance. Little Sheltie dogs chasing toys don't seem to be bothered by it.

 

Hurricane Sandy in Cape May

H. Sandy clouds still over the Delaware Bay

Gladys with the Storm at Sea quilt

I started Hurricane Sandy Week just outside Trenton, predicting that if the storm was as bad as the weather forecasters were saying, I wouldn't see work on Monday or Tuesday. The hurricane, they said, would join forces with a Nor'Easter and a cold front, and as the week went on H. Sandy was predicted to make landfall at my original home of Cape May, New Jersey. The hurricane winds were frightening and brought with them strange noises (trees and limbs falling), and finally, darkness. I had candles and flashlights ready and pep-talked myself into making the best of the situation. We ran the generator from time to time creating intermittent power and wifi, but that thing takes a lot of gas and makes a lot of noise. I was able to gather some news from those few hours of television news and 3G social media sources. It turned out that the Central Jersey, Staten Island, and Lower Manhattan coasts took the full force of the storm, while Cape May was largely spared. My work was closed all week because the hurricane traveled inland and wreaked havoc in Bucks County and other southeastern Pennsylvania locations. This was a blessing for those of us sitting on couches without power as the shocking images of the Jersey Shore became public. 

I shared on Facebook whatever news of Cape May I could find since almost everyone who knew I had a connection there was asking how we fared. Exit Zero and Cape May Times turned out to be the most reliable and informative. This was impressive: the staff of Exit Zero offered to email photographs for properties for homeowners who couldn't get away to check on them.They must have understood the anxiety we face owning a beloved, memory-filled home so far from where we live.  Slowly it became apparent that although there was some flooding, some damage, and a whole lot of sand piled up in town, Cape May did pretty well. At the same time, though, we were seeing the pictures of a devastated coast just a little bit to the north. Could it be that Cape May really dodged a bullet? I had to drive down to see for myself and check on our family's house.

There's a path in there somewhere.

It's all good news, really. The house is fine, and I suspect maybe power never went out here at all. The flowerpots I thought may have turned into projectiles in the hurricane winds were just where I left them. There were branches and trees down here and there, but the kids around here were already back in school for a couple days. After checking around the house and finding no damage, I took Gladys for a walk on the bay beach where we walk all the time. There has been some erosion, and our usual path from the street through the dunes now contains a small (two-foot) cliff. Some paths  are unusable with five- or six-foot cliffs, and some were untouched. I had to walk the whole length of our usual baywalk in spite of the wind and cold just to prove to myself it was okay and to reclaim it from H. Sandy. (And it was windy!)

Gladys actually likes the wind.

Some stores were closed.

Next on my agenda was a trip into Cape May City. This favorite place was evacuated before the storm and people were not let back until the flooding went down and all was safe. News must not have gotten out that Cape May was reopened, because I had the shops to myself! I shopped a little, but mainly walked around town reassuring myself that all is okay. People I met were eager to share stories and learn about the Trenton and Bucks County areas, and what I saw on my way down to the shore. (No, I had no trouble and no, I didn't wait in long gas station lines like they saw on TV. All of NJ is not like that. I had luckily filled my tank just before the storm.) They were hungry for a broader perspective. Curiously, some seemed unaware of the magnitude of the damage less than an hour north. I chatted with one woman as she decorated her beautiful, damage-free inn for Christmas, blissfully clueless. On a brighter note, and these are just the things I know about, the Washington Street Mall merchants have committed to donating ten percent of their profits for the next month, and Captain Ginny of the Skimmer Salt Marsh Safari is running three salt marsh cruises tomorrow to benefit the Red Cross. We'll be on the 1:30. It seems the birding is fantastic these days.

That lake behind the Arcade is not supposed to be there.

The Cape May beach showed the most H. Sandy damage. There was water where sand was supposed to be, and sand all over the Promenade and streets. Some of the first amazing photos to come out of Cape May showed six feet of sand being removed from the streets on the east end of town. The sand on the beach moved. The volleyball nets now look like really narrow tennis nets,

Those are supposed to be volleyball nets at Steger's Beach.

and the stand that rents chairs and umbrellas in the summer was almost completely buried. 

Steger's umbrella and chair rental stand is buried in that crusty alien sand.

There's a new berm created by erosion, giving my familiar beach spot a whole new look. 

A new bump in the beach.

The sand is not the fluffy kind we're used to in Cape May, but a flat, hard, crusty, alien variety. I figure the massive rain hardened it and the wind flattened it.

So that's it, my H. Sandy Cape May update. We were darn lucky in Cape May and Trenton. My heart goes out to those neighbors to the north facing unimaginable, sickening loss. New Jersey will rebuild the shore it is so proud of, but for now there's the anxiety and grief through which there is no shortcut.