English Bay

The beaches on English Bay benefit from their orientation (using groins) and added sand. They are just one element of Vancouver's magnificent, public shoreline, and are located between Stanley Park and the dense urban neighborhood sprouting along False Bay. The 13 mile seawall path allows bikers to go from downtown around Stanley Park and False Bay all the way to Kitsilano.

Four evenings every summer, the beach hosts a few hundred thousand people for fireworks. Each following morning, Vancouver Parks cleans up the mess and makes the beaches look like new again, with the help of big beach toys.

Duwamish Head

In the early 1900s, Luna Park was an amusement park on a pier - must have been a neat place on summer evenings. A couple years ago, the city fixed up the little park, removing the decaying seawall and allowing the sea to flow underneath.

Harbor Avenue was once on piles over the beach, below the high bluffs of Duwamish Head. Eventually, they filled it all in, burying the original beach under the road and beach houses. Now the beach houses are five story condos, the better to stop landslides from knocking roller bladers into the Sound.

Seacrest Park

Three pocket beaches tucked into the western shore of Elliott Bay, separated by riprapped headlands of 19th century fill. The pockets probably correspond to location of wharves, where fill wasn't dumped. The coarse, well-sorted gravel leads to steep beach faces. The beaches were constructed in the late 1980s.

Rolling Bay Walk

In January, 1997, a family of four was killed by a landslide at this site on Bainbridge Island (see Brenda Bell's article, The Liquid Earth, in the January, 1999, Atlantic Monthly). Other nearby houses were lost to separate slides during the previous winter and in March 1997, although without the fatalities. Today, a double-tiered retaining wall is being built on the slope so the waterfront lots can be redeveloped.

Point Bolin

Some seawalls are special. I'm sure there is a great story to go with this one, but it's not one I've learned yet. The concrete pipe segments that remain upright are acting as planters for dune grass.

Chimacum Beach

More pictures of the evolving beach at Chimacum. The spit seems to be becoming more distinct. The hydrology of the back-barrier lagoon is still a bit confused - with two outlets and a drainage governed by the incidental topographic subtleties of February's excavation work. Some organic material is accumulating in the nascent lagooon. The hydroseeded vegetation on the upland is beginning to take hold, along with a healthy assortment of nettles, blackberry, and morning glory.

Clallam Bay

Back to May for this one. Some beaches attract more attention than others. After the Clallam River reaches the coast, it hangs a sharp left and heads a mile or two west before finding its way to the sea. But it doesn't always find its way to the sea in the same place. And sometimes, it doesn't even have the oomph to reach the sea at all, disappearing into the gravel behind the berm for months at a time. This presents a bit of a challenge if you are anadramous. A bridge usually provides pedestrians a way across the river to the beach. Except last year, when the river migrated right under the seaward end of the bridge, taking the steps away and leaving a bridge to nowhere. The best answer is often to roll with the punches rather than fight (or even try to predict) nature's whims. Simpler to build a new ramp and prepare for occasional closures.

Passe-a-Grille

I liked Pass-a-Grille, maybe because I enjoy these older beach communities where condos and t-shirt shots don't dominate the landscape. I also like beach towns where there there is continuous public access to the beach; not isolated parks and narrow corridors between hotel towers.

I suppose the presence of intact, early 20th century buildings, is an indication that this area has been spared a direct hit for close to a century. I can't help but wonder if someday I'll be looking at news footage of this barrier wiped clean of structures. I wonder how you rebuild to FEMA standards while maintaining the requirements for historic landmarks?

Clearwater Beach

Clearwater looked to me just like a Florida Beach should look like, with sunshine, crowds, colorful umbrellas, and lots of the large multi-story hurricane deflectors built in the dunes.

Florida Panhandle

It's been thirty years since I've been in Florida, and now two trips in less than six weeks! Our time at the beach has been limited by our family's general abhorrence of hot, muggy weather, but we've managed some short excursions (for the rest of the story, go to hshipman blog).

The flight from DFW to Tampa bypassed a large storm over New Orleans, so I didn't get good views of the coast until we got to Mobile - I was hoping for a good overview of post-Katrina Pass Christian and Biloxi. We flew a few miles north of the coastline from Mobile to Appalachicola area before cutting across the Gulf toward Tampa Bay. The photo may be Destin, though these resort beaches tend to all look the same from 35,000' (or maybe even from sea level?).

The hurricane deflectors (very small in this picture) remind me of lightning rods on the ridges of Pennsylvania barns or the wire spikes that keep seagulls off of waterfront restaurants and pigeons off of public monuments. They have been constructed up and down the southeast coast. Since hurricanes aren't very frequent, authorities let people live in them when they aren't actually being used to protect the nation from tropical storms.