come to the beach, chill by the sea / see how your heavy life looks from the coastline ☀
The last time we drove down to the coastline was May 14th, and life was going incredibly well. We were all happy, busy, inspired, and thriving. And then June came around (no comment), July absolutely sucked, August was hell, and the beginning of September was super stressful and highly disappointing.
Before yesterday, the thought of taking a day trip down felt more like an exhausting chore than any kind of fun adventure. But now (dare I say the words, lest I jinx it?), it seems like life might actually be beginning to calm down and become a little more centered again.
(knock on wood)
And we finally made it back to our second home.
was she stalking the seagulls, or were the seagulls stalking her?
we’ve seen Trustom in all four seasons, and currently we’re at the point where the dry grasses are taller than we are
Taylor took a day off from work (we really wanted to get this trip in before Edgar gets big enough to make some real trouble — it’s going to be any day now), and showed up at our house at 8am.
We filled the back of her little old Subaru with blankets, food, lots of water, and 3 different kinds of jackets, because it’s that time of year where the temperatures are totally unpredictable and we’d rather be over-prepared than uncomfortable.
tadpoles, turtles, and crown shyness
We drove right into the glaring morning sun, watched all the kiddies get dropped off at school, drove past Maxwell Mays (definitely haunted), and Parker Woodland (highly recommend), and Carter Preserve (don’t recommend), through West Greenwich, and Exeter, and Carolina (and all the other small towns in Rhode Island), past my late great-gramma’s house (which seems to be deeply loved by its new owners), and finally made it to our beautiful Trustom Pond.
(and yes, we have an extensive adventure playlist™ for the drive down — every song is preapproved by all the car’s occupants)
life hasn’t been the same since I dropped $$ on prescription sunglasses (highly recommend)
We ended up picking the perfect day, because the weather was gloriously fallish, and our thoroughly-thought-out clothing kept us comfortably warm.
There may have been surprisingly few birds for Riley Mae to chase on the trail (she expected more, as we’re still in migration season), but we did spy a few swans from the look-out platform, and made sure to squeeze through the overgrown shrubs to watch the sunning cormorants from our favorite grove of wavy trees.
(listen, I know we don’t own Trustom, but all I can say is that I think we should have a park bench dedicated to us there)
attempting to ID mushrooms — they were either edible or extremely poisonous
After we spend the morning hiking at Trustom, we always head to the Charlestown breachway to eat lunch. Every time I go to the coast I say this could be the day I meet my lover by the sea, but then I always end up falling asleep on the beach…so, like, I wouldn’t even know if the love of my life walked right past me. It’s a real problem, I know. But despite the lack of eligible bachelors (I guess future-hubby was at work somewhere — which is okay, being a responsible adult is hot), a very friendly lady did walk up to us and asked if we had spotted the ship wreck.
We had no idea what she was talking about, but she told us that she heard that after a storm you can sometimes see the remains of an old ship appear, and she was on the lookout for it.
the autumn olive berries are ripe — apparently they’re edible, but we didn’t attempt to try any
We, of course, were quite intrigued, and upon some light research, we found that there are indeed the remains of a “mystery ship” that appear on the shore in just the right conditions (i.e. the tide is out, and a recent storm has eroded the sand). How could we have never known this?? After visiting Charlestown beach for our entire lives?? We only later realized that the very large, sturdy pieces of old wood sticking up out of the sand — which Mom had jokingly referred to as an old ship wreck — may have been a tiny piece of just that.
Apparently nobody knows where the ship came from, where it was heading, or who was on it, but parts of it still sit under the sand of our most favorite beach.
THE MORE YOU KNOW.
another cute look, wasted on the seagulls
And the beach was indeed quite a different landscape than it normally is — we were met with steep cliffs of sand, and continuous waves that began their crashing way out in the water, and continued rolling and combining and colliding with other waves, allllll the way to shore.
Sandbars, and rivers of swift-moving, salty water separated the beach from the ocean, and certain waves crashing in opposite directions kept creating these squares of moving water on the sand. I can only assume that the swimming conditions would have been treacherous — we didn’t do anything more than walk ankle-deep in the slower moving water, although a few waves did catch us off guard and got us quite damp (and my hat did fly off right into the water once…or maybe twice. Hence the hat grab in every photo).
we bought these hats after we got a nasty sunburn on an adventure, but I think they just ended up making us look like Jane’s dad in Tarzan (you know who I’m talking about)
The strange beach environment had to have been created by the very edge of tropical storm Ophelia (cue the Lumineers) who reached up the coast last weekend. I guess she did more damage in Charlestown than she did at home.
Again, there were very few birds for Riley Mae to stalk at the beach, but a couple cute seagulls always hang around to keep her occupied (for such supposedly uninhibited birds, they weren’t even brave enough to grab the strawberry tops we threw their way, so I’m not impressed), and one lone osprey who dove into the sea, caught a fish, and flew right past us at eye-level.
While Riley Mae has informed us that most of the osprey have already migrated south for the winter, this one passing through Rhode Island completed our adventure day perfectly (as did the hawk who almost flew into our car on the way home).
We left just in time to drive into the glaring evening sun, watch the kiddies get dropped off from school, and listen to 75 more minutes of adventure classics™ while we made our way back to lil ol’ Connecticut.
And let me just say, day trips are great, but the post-adventure exhaustion is real. And nothing beats coming home — tired and sandy — and putting on a pair of sweatpants.
art by jordan rae 