Posted on 08/10/2019 4:20:31 AM PDT by NOBO2012
Raj and I are off for the weekend to visit friends at the beach – or “to the shore” as they say on the Eastern seaboard.
And shore may be more accurate than beach this year as Lake Michigan - like all the Great Lakes - is near all time record high water levels. As a result even the largest beaches at the State parks are smaller this year and places with smaller beaches to start with have virtually no beach at all. The water laps at the very base of the bluff and erodes it away.
The stairway to beach access at Orchard Beach State Park near Manistee remains closed for the season. High water levels in Lake Michigan caused erosion and eliminated the beach area.
Orchard Beach during happier times
Where you could once easily walk for miles along the beach you will now run into impediments that will make it unnavigable on foot.
Millennials will of course be in a panic, thinking the world is coming to an end. Old-timers like Raj and me know that like nearly everything else in life this too shall pass. We learned this in the early 80’s, the last time lake levels were nearly this high. A particularly fierce August storm hammered the bluff at our Lake Huron cabin so badly that when morning came – bright, windy, sunny and cool – the lower half of our stone and concrete stairs leading down the 40 foot bluff to the beach had become unmoored and tumbled into the lake. Worse, the boat Raj had painstakingly built the year before was also ripped from where it had been winched a quarter of the way up the bluff and tied to a tree. Gone, except for the transom that was still tied to the tree. But that’s another story altogether.
Back to the history-began-the-day-I-was-born kids: of course they believe it is global warming, what else could it be? Poor dears never heard of sun spots and I know they’ll be sorry they insisted on getting rid of fossil fuels in order to save the planet when the next little ice age arrives. The focus of their urgency will quickly shift to the need to save themselves. Perhaps they’ll end up emigrating someplace warmer, like Mexico.
But I digress…the point is I’m gone. On a vacation of sorts. Not even taking my computer. I’m scheduling this posting to go up Saturday morning and will also have an open thread scheduled for Sunday morning. So do behave, that way you do. I may check in via my phone, but probably not.
Have a wonderful weekend and I’ll see you all back here on Monday. Unless I decide to run away from home permanently.
Posted from: MOTUS A.D.
If you are from Philly you say “down the shore”.
We say that in NY too :)
NJ is south.
I spent last weekend on Torch Lake taking my friends boat to the sand bar to hang in the afternoon.
Scenic.
Lower 48ers for most of you!
The meaning of Going down the shore depends on from which sector of NJ you hail; that's why Darryl Hannah's backhanded comment about Wildwood in the movie Wall Street was clearly the result of an uneducated dolt: some NYC thing like her character would have instead spoke of Mannesquan or Long Branch or Asbury Park.
FWIW, the best cheesesteak I ever had was on the boardwalk in Wildwood while the best ice cream was from a shack in Asbury Park near The Stone Pony.
And for the record, I hate Springsteen.
We just say we’re going to The Cottage.
We lived in Cherry Hill when I was a surgery intern at Cooper. IIRC when people said the were going “down to the shore” the left out “to the”. It was just down shore. “We’re going down shore, wanna come?”
LOL
I like some of his songs, have had GREAT cheese steaks on a few different boardwalks in NJ and if I was going to the Hamptons from Staten Island I would say UP to the shore :)
BTW, is that you in front of that storefront?
You could go to Rehoboth Beach DE(Biden Country) and watch the fags sashay by.
Asbury Park is making a pretty good comeback.
Spent a few hours at the pinball museum - $15 bucks buys a half day of free play on dozens of vintage pinball machines, shuffle bowling, target games, etc.
Each has a nice plaque over it describing the game, why it’s unique, who were the artists & manufacturers, etc.
Well worth it.
http://silverballmuseum.com/asbury-park/
I've always love Lake Michigan, cold, clear and deep.....
Not me...as Flo &a Eddie would say, it’s Robert Planet
While I'm not a Springsteen fan at all, I have it on good authority that Bruce makes donations anonymously in and around the area. I give the man props for "giving back" and not being a typical attention-seeking whore in this regard, and his marathon shows.
I'm a Southern boy. God gave us the Gulf Stream so ya'll can come and swim in November (Canadians come even in January!) It's fantastic that the lakes are full again.
You missed a barely-audible but essential syllable. The proper expression is, "downashore." To break it up into phonetic Philly/SJersey-accent units, daown nuh shuoor.
Close
It’s “Down the shore.”
Or, in NewJerseySpeak, Downashore.
I have managed to avoid The Shore for years and years, preferring the woods and hills of Northwest Jersey, sitting on my deck and looking at... trees.
...we’re gowin downah shoor for Seen-yeh Weeeeek. Like twelvovus er gonna stay at mah grammas hause an pound Genny Creams and get waysted.
Up North.
A term unique to Michiganders, and all of us know what that means.
Up North It’s high summer right now. Simply awesome.
The last time the lake was this high, 1987, National Geographic used it as an excuse to tell us about the coming ice age.....gotta love it.
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