What are you doing, New Year's Eve ?

Well New Year's Eve day I explored a new-to-me beach.

When she took me on her Eastern Shore tour a few weeks back, Amy-Lynn showed me Conrad Beach.  I'd gone looking for it again on my own and not been successful. 

"How could you not find a beach?" you ask.

Good question.

I opened up Google Earth to discover how to find the beach. 

Do you use Googe Earth ?  It's quite amazing.  Using it, I was able to see that the turn off to the beach was via Conrad Road.  That makes sense.  And that across from the turning was a small school, school playground and a baseball diamond.  With these markers in my head I was able to see the very poorly marked turning.  Sure,  there was a small sign that said "Conrad Road".  But no sign indicating that 4 km down that road I'd find a spectacular long beach that lead around points of land into other beaches.  The small sign on the nondescript turning was easy to miss.

A local I met on the beach told me that sometimes in the summer the residents take down the Conrad Road sign as an added way of keeping this treasured beach a secret ! 

While at Rainbow Haven there are large parking lots in preparation for the summer onslaught of visitors, at Conrad Beach there is a pot-holed gravel parking area that holds maybe, ten cars. 

Conrad Beach seems to be a mecca for dog walkers.  Most of the people I met there were walking dogs.

Wendy, Chandler and I spent almost two hours at the beach.  I knew I'd be arriving around low tide, which seems to move around the clock, moving ahead by around an hour each day.  So if low tide was at 1 pm yesterday, it'll be "around" 2 ish today and 3 ish tomorrow.  BTW there are two low and two high tides a day.  It reminds me of lungs breathing in and out, in and out.  An amazing source of green power, just waiting to be harnessed !

It was pretty cold when I got there.  The sun had gone behind the clouds and when I dragged the camera from my well-insulated coat pocket to snap a pic I had to briefly take off my gloves.   Within seconds my hands were aching from the cold and it was difficult to even feel the shutter on the camera. 

But there was so much to capture !   There were ice formations on the beach that looked like waves frozen in time, which I guess is what they are.  There were teeny shells and many kinds of sea weed washed up on the stoney section of the beach.  There were odd bird tracks in the sand.  And lovely geometrical designs where blades of grass had been blown by the wind into making delicate circles in the sand.  Out on the peninsula was the skeleton of an old dock which was encrusted with ice.  There was just so much to see !  And then the sun came out and it warmed up noticibly.

      

 

If you're keen on using Google Earth and want to see where the beach is, zoom in on  44°38’33 (Latitude– North) and 63°22’10 (Long – West).  It's east of Eastern Passage 20 km by road but probably only 5-6 km as the crow or eagle flies.