A day on the Vineyard

Friends of my wife with a share in an ancestral vacation cabin on Martha's Vineyard invited us out for the day.  It was a gorgeous day in a pretty place with generous, hospitable friends.  (This is more "travel" than "nature.")

From Woods Hole* to Oak Bluffs, the ferry takes forty-five minutes.  By taking the ferry, we avoid a day's sail, and passage among the rocks and reefs and currents for which the Hole is notorious.

Breakfast aboard.

Some Woods Hole residents give new meaning to the term "waterfront property."

Oak Harbor is a bit too cramped for the ferry, which will dock outside the entrance.

 The "Bunkhouse" is an idiosyncratic abode shaped by generations of extended family.

The view from the "bunkhouse" is maintained by occasional cutting.

The shoreline below the bunkhouse is rocky, but a pretty good beach lies about a quarter mile south.

People sometimes leave rock art.

I think this was once a seal.  It's too large for a bird and has hair rather than feathers. 
(Hind flippers in foreground.)  Gray seals--once rare hearabouts--have returned to these waters.

Seaweeds and animals regularly get stranded in the intertidal zone,

but I'd never seen anything like this.  I think this is a cluster of stalked barnacles.

A trek of several hundred yardsfrom bunkhouse to the beach

passes through meadow, woods, and swamp with a short boardwalk.

A small pond above the beach.

Every time we go, I replenish my supply of interesting and beautiful rocks.

Son exploring.

A three-sixty of the shore and sea.

Early evening, and shadows lengthen.

Early evening reading, and then nightfall.

We ate, talked, walked the beach, and just visited.  Not to waste opportunities, we aimed for the day's last ferry for the trip home--and just barely made it aboard.  With an hour's drive home, we were in bed around midnight.


*Yes, that Woods Hole: home of the famed Marine Biological Laboratory and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (home of Alvin).