I arrive in Montauk in the frigid driving rain, but that's no reason not to
initiate the latest quest for the perfect wave:
Not sure which is better...
The next day dawns sunny but with a cool (cold) breeze off the ocean.
Frank and I are ready for anything.
Frank rocks his Chad Vader sweatshirt on the bluffs.
At Turtle Cove, someone has sculpted a stairway to heaven...
...that just one year ago was much higher than now:
2012 left; 2013 right.
Later, Frank watches a bunch of crazy kids spend all of three seconds in the icy waves.
Later we admire the rocks we've collected at Turtle Cove and watch a rainbow off of our balcony...
...while a bunch of crazy kids ignore it in favor of partying hearty.
The next day we go back up to the Point where a box is set up for used fish filament...
...so the cormorants and other marine species don't choke on it.
I see a number of faces on our walk:
Above, the monkey-profile hoodoo;
below, well, you tell me.
This rock, below, is two-faced, each of them pretty scary.
And this one is a relative of the Rapa Nui (Easter Island) folk, I believe.
I snap Frank at the rock with my new iPhone...
...and he snaps me, but isn't yet savvy to the iPhone protocols.
There is a lot of bright magenta seaweed lining the shore...
...that creates a Zen-garden effect around some serious rocks...
...and outlines the human presence at the Point.
This is an asphalt "road" that seems a bit bizarre.
And here is "Money Pond" - don't know how that particular name came about;
no doubt there's a story there.
Later I decide to go for a swim in the motel pool, yet am confronted with this!
It appears that "close" means 4PM in this particular case!
I can only gaze longingly at the azure depths that I am excluded from.
I'm forced to go down to the beach and walk moodily in the icy surf,
bemoaning my fate, or at least my bad timing.
Not such a bad fate, after all.
Our room takes on that 21st century look...
...but Frank snaps it back to the 19th century as he makes a plein air painting...
Whoa! Check out the mongo-mushrooms, purchased at Gosman's Dock.
Here I am, having a lovely time in our Montauk abode.
Hmmm, what's this gull chomping on?
Some good eatin' for shore!
I go for a walk in the sunset, and decide to go as far as the little black spot in the distance
before I turn back...
...which turns out to be a freakin' baby seal!
OMG! WTF!
I'm the only human on the beach! Is this an animal in distress?
It looks so sad and forlorn!
I call my sister in Minnesota and say, I'm on beach with a baby seal!
What should I do?
She says, call 911!
So I do, and their words of wisdom were, let it be, let it be.
Well, that didn't satisfy me, so, after having a nice chat with the baby seal,
who laughs at all my jokes,
I go back to the room and google "baby seal on the beach, Montauk"
which eventually brings up the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation...
and I finally get through to Daniella, who asks me many cogent questions
about its behavior and look, and says that it sounds like it's okay
and will be fine, but I still have dreams that night about
seals invading the beach being chased by a very special kind of marine wolf
who can swim!
I scurry out the next morning, hoping not to find it still there, perhaps run
over by a beach-roving beach rover, or attacked by crazed dogs,
but all I find is this bit of disturbed sand, with evidence
that the tide has come up to its resting place and spirited it away.
I thank the great ocean spirits who know more than I,
and go back to the room for our last fabulous, sunny day in Montauk.
On the way home, I see a line of cormorants looking for action in the roiling sea.
Later we hang on the beach and Frank attempts to use the iPhone to snap me in his fabulous beach chair, but turns things around and gets an unintentional self-portrait...
...before he figures it out.
The magic of serendipity!
We go up for our last dinner...
...shrimp on the Barbie...
...and figure out which rocks will go back
to the mother sea from whence they came.
All the ones on the right are going back,
the rest have made it known that they want to go to Brooklyn.
...and we walk into the sunset for the last time...
...until next time!
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