Continuing my July 4th walk around the south end of Marrowstone Island. These are interesting bluffs and ones that most folks will never see, so there are several more short posts coming.
Lip Lip Point is where the eastern shore of Marrowstone begins to turn west. It is underlain by more of the Tertiary sandstone we saw at Nodule Point (previous post), which outcrops on the beach, but the bluff is almost all Pleistocene. This is a remarkably exposed location - large fetch from the south and nothing to keep the beach sediment from skittering north -- normally a recipe for rapid erosion. But the point is anchored by the bedrock.
The bluffs in each direction from Lip Lip Point are quite different. There's a big divot in the coastline to the north, between here and Nodule Point. It appears to correspond to a segment of bluff where the bedrock dips below beach level, leaving easily eroded outwash at the base of the bluff. But in the other direction, to the southwest, there is a remarkably long, straight stretch of coastline, with the Tertiary forming a significant bulkhead. See the next post for the rest of the story.
Google Maps: AERIAL VIEW
Ecology Coastal Atlas: 2006 Aerial Photo
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