Horseneck Beach

We don't get out to Westport as much as we should, so we solved that problem by visiting Horseneck Beach.

Horseneck Beach is widely considered to be the best beach on the South Coast, and it is difficult to argue with someone making this claim. It's 800 acres, with 2 miles of barrier beach. 

In many ways, it serves the same dunes/sandy beach purpose that Duxbury serves on the South Shore, or that Truro serves on Cape Cod.

It's important that, to keep people's bare feet from suffering on searing white sand, they put down a nice strip of something even hotter. HNB loses points for this... but HNB has plenty of points to spare. I spent my whole time there walking around going "Damn, this is pretty." 

See? Sea.

Trampled dune fencing looks nice, but it's not serving the purpose it was put up for.  This has more of a "trampled by snow" than "trampled underfoot" look.

People as a whole aren't evil, and they don't trample dune grass on purpose. The  ones who do trample it usually don't know any better. If you make a path like this for them, they will use it and trample less beach grass. It took Duxbury much of my childhood to figure this out.

That point we took away earlier? Give it back, and then some, for "cool lifeguard house design." Two different buildings bearing the red cross, btw...

As a non-local, I'm not sure what purpose this building has. I thought it might be the snack bar, but they have a Seaside Cafe van parked there to feed the locals. It doesn't have the outdoor showers of the bath house I saw a bit west (see below). It must be the office or something.

They taste like chicken...

As you can see, the chemtrails already have those people there acting all passive and compliant.

Now, I'm feeling all passive and compliant.

Needing to walk onto the dunes in order to read the KEEP OFF THE DUNES sign sort of defeats the purpose, and is one of the things that a graduate of Dune Sign University knows instinctively. Westport played it cheap and didn't get a DSU grad. I'd take points away, but there is no such thing as DSU.

Yes, sometimes I take a picture of a cool rock, especially if my co-pilot is 10 years old.

If my memory were better or if I zoomed out a little more when shooting, I'd probably have an answer to the "Why did they fence off sand?" question.

Less touristy than Cape Cod, Westport seems to lack the urgency that the Cape has with Shoulder Season.

Every beach should have one of these, and I'll be writing an article about it soon enough. Westport people can skip that one, or read it and be like "Yup, we had that before he wrote about it."

Gotta be honest... the pricing isn't that bad with the captive audience factor. Try eating at Fenway for this money...

Lacking better adjectives, I'll just say "very Eastham."

Granted, I'm just a visitor, but Westport really ought to call the Beach Fencing Repair guy.

Can't do a beach article without the obligatory sand shot, player...

Picture of a picture, old school Horseneck Beach.

Again lacking the words, I'll just say that there is very much some Duxbury Beach West happening here...

Horseneck Beach parking rates

That's either floatsam or jetsam, not really sure.

If you shoot from right under it, it looks just like Truro.

I don't know how Horseneck Beach got the name, but it most likely has something to do with how she looks on a map. Let me check Wikipedia....

Nope.

"The name of the beach is believed to derive from the Algonquin word hassanegk, meaning "a house made of stone."

A two part lesson on dune vegetation, above and below. 

Let's all shower five men on a pole, eh? 

If you were wondering how they power the charging station, wonder no more.

A bit blurry, but not as tilted as my usual work.

I was having a fine time until the Allosaurus ran out of the dunes and started devouring beachcombers.

Al and I agree that Horseneck Beach is one of the best in the state.

Harboring: Duxbury

We've been visiting various harbors lately, and yesterday was Duxbury's turn.

It was a stormy and choppy day, not ideal for boating or photography... especially if you're shooting with a phone, and just one little drop on the lens can greatly degrade the hack-photography that was already going on.

I've actually owned a house with greater ocean-safety concerns than this house... in Duxbury, too. While this house is indeed floating, it doesn't have waves breaking on it or water rushing into it. I've had that over in the Gurnet Road area, in most every bad nor'easter since 1970 or so. I have since moved to a house on a hill.

It's a bit early in the boating season, so we have more homes and less boats in this article. The true players wait for a bit later in the warm season to get their boats in the water. I go through Duxbury a lot, so you can count on some good look-at-the-rich-guy-boat articles once summer is summering.

You only catch the most gangsta of lobsters if you set the traps on the dock and wait for your quarry to crawl up for a snack. On the plus side, you don't waste much gas and there is little wear-n-tear on the boat.

Duxbury representin' hard with the green dragon. You can't take this boat out on Loch Ness, as Nessie may think you're snatching up one of her kids. She reacts poorly in those scenarios.

The Harbormaster should have a bigger boat, as Chief Brody used to say.

It would be a more patriotic shot if one of those white boats had been painted red,

The 2017 Oscar for Most Nautical Doorway goes to...

Windy, raw days suck for you and I... but they are a boon for sailors, who need wind and who are most likely going to end up wet anyhow.

Obligatory rich person house shot...

I wasn't kidding about the boats not being in yet this early in the season,

Box o' Buoys... 

This is technically a cove, but it works in the Harboring article series.

Those dock ladders look odd without the integral-to-the-process boat to lower yourself into.

Every time that I drive by the Bluefish River Bridge as an adult, I'm amazed that I didn't paralyze myself as a kid diving off of it.

"When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up." 

Driving Around: Fall River

We took the Cranberry County Mobile News Center to Fall River the other day...

We use Fairhaven as our South Coast base, but we would move to this building if the F starts getting touchy.

Iwo Jima memorial in Centenial Park

Borden Flats Lighthouse

My church as a kid was based in the Green Harbor post office for a while, so you can understand why I included this shot even though I shot it from a moving car through a fence and across a soccer field.

Fall River residents are nice enough to pose for shots when you ask them to.

A former purse manufacturer who many locals still hate for closing down suddenly and laying off 100 workers while they were on vacation back in 1997. "Left them holding the bag," you might say.

Lots of action here.... Battleship Cove, the Braga Bridge, the police and fire boats, and the Youth Sailing Program sailboats. 

Worry not, the passenger does most of the shooting... we're like suburban Crips.

Pizza-sized jellyfish are already in season in Fall River.

"The town doesn't look Three Mile Island enough, what can we do about that?"

Before anyone complains about there being more to Fall River than just old abandoned factory buildings, understand that I grew up in the sticks and any building over 30 feet high is fascinating to me. 

The FRFD's flagship vessel, the Adam Chip Strong...

USS Massachusetts and friends,,,

Thanks for having us!

Ned Point Light In Mattapoisett, MA

We paid a visit to Mattapoisett, Massachusetts to check out Ned Point Light.

Ned Point Light is also known as Ned's Point Light by the locals. It was built in 1838 for $4500 of those 1838 dollars. John Quincy Adams was instrumental in getting the funds. It is older than Mattapoisett, which was part of Rochester until 1857. It was built on the land of Edwin “Ned” Dexter.

It was made with stones that they found nearby. The contractor (Leonard Hammond), who also owned the town tavern, didn't finish in time. Stalling an inspector at his tavern, he had a crew try to make it look finished. The inspector stepped into the lighthouse and fell through the floor, which was merely planks laid over barrels.

It used to have a lightkeeper's house, but that was floated across Buzzards Bay to Bourne, where it now serves Wings Neck Light.

Ned Point Light was deactivated from 1951-1963. It was restored by locals in the 1990s.

It isn't open for touring, other than once a week in the summer. It's 39 feet high and has 32 granite steps.

She guards the northern edge of Mattapoisett Harbor.

Ned!

Borden Flats Lighthouse Hotel

One of my favorite lighthouses around is in Fall River. This is odd, because I tend to romanticize lighthouses as isolated things on the end of a lonely beach. In that regard, it's odd to see one while I'm eating Popeye's chicken in the car.

Borden Flats Lighthouse sits at the mouth of the Taunton River, where it empties out into Mount Hope Bay. If I were a better photographer, you'd see how cool it looks there, but that's why you can read this for free.

Borden Flats Lighthouse was erected in 1881. It, and the flats it sits on, are named for the famous Borden family of Fall River. The Bordens may have had a daughter turn up in the news at some point for some reason or another, I'm not sure....

I think the Borden family may have been into hotels, because the Lizzie Borden house is now a B&B. The Borden Flats Lighthouse, which looks pretty much like a lighthouse to me, is actually a hotel!

The actual good pictures are lifted from the Borden Flats Lighthouse website.

Fall River, a bustling textile town in the 1800s, got a lot of shipping traffic, as well as steamboat ferry action. Mount Hope Bay is rather shallow, and Borden Flats were ship-wrecking treacherous. It was formerly marked by an unlit beacon. $25K was set aside for construction of the lighthouse.

It went into action on October 1, 1881. It had a kerosene-fed fourth order Fresnel lens, and you know that I have no idea what that means. It got a modern plastic lens in 1977.

It was electrified in 1957, automated in 1963, and the fog bell was replaced by an electronic foghorn in 1983... a mistake in my view, but I also don't live near/have to listen to it.

The 1938 hurricane didn't topple Borden Flats Lighthouse, but it did give it a Pisa-style tilt that you notice once someone points it out to you. They built an additional caisson around it to keep it from having a ruined-castle style look.

In 2000, the lighthouse was auctioned off to Cindy and Craig Korstad, who are in the Buy Lighthouses And Turn Them Into Hotels business. I think they dropped $53K on it, then many K more renovating it.

It stands 50 feet tall, it has a 250 mm white light that flashes every 2.5 seconds, The foghorn goes off every 10 seconds, or- as Elwood Blues said when showing his apartment to Joliet Jake- "so often you won't notice it after a while." It is an active US Coast Guard aid to navigation, and is of the "Spark Plug" variety.

It seems to be tastefully decorated, and it looks delicate enough that I will be on the "Don't touch anything!!" prohibition orders from my photographer when we tour it.

That's right... you can tour it for $20 a pop. You can also stay the night, for rates as low as $299 a night off-season.

Here's what I can learn about it from the website without calling the people like a real reporter does:

- Swimming is "strongly discouraged"  as this is both a shipping channel and not too far down the coast from where the last fatal shark attack in Massachusetts happened. The current is around 7 knots, and the lighthouse is surrounded by large, diver-paralyzing rocks.

- It runs off solar panels, so having Chief Brody kill the shark by tricking it into biting the electric wire running to the lighthouse isn't a viable exit strategy.

- Just like when it was built in 1881, the lighthouse has a DVD player and can get local stations on the TV. It lacks WiFi.

- The best access is from Borden Light Marina, the trip takes 5 minutes. I'm not sure if they ferry you over themselves. It would be a heroic swim, especially while carrying luggage.

- BYOB allowed, no smoking inside.

- You call 911 for emergencies, unless you know the Sea Mafia or perhaps even Aquaman. They say that the Justice League only keeps Aquaman around in case trouble arises at the Borden Flats Lighthouse.

- The Coast Guard has 24/7/365 access rights to the lighthouse.

- Sunsets are amazing from the lantern room. I'd imagine that the rest of the day is pretty nice up there, too.

- The lighthouse, like every other one, is haunted. The ghosts seem to be a giggling little girl, a classical music fan, and one of the keepers entering the lower floor while you're on an upper one.

- If you dream of buying a lighthouse, understand that there is Herculean maintenance involved. "You can't buy it and visit it once a year, your investment will wash into the sea." Much of the hotel revenue is poured back into the lighthouse via renovations and maintenance.

- Two guests only, and no pets allowed... even seals.

- The picture below is from US Coast Guard, circa 1900:

Sonic, Olive Garden Cometh: Fast Food Oversaturation In Wareham?

If your doctor told you that you needed more cholesterol, you might want to get into the Fatmobile and bring the pod to East Wareham.

Sonic Drive-In, an Oklahoma-based restaurant chain that banks much green in the South, is slowly edging into Massachusetts. They have set their sites on Wareham, via the Patel family, owners of a bunch of Taunton-area convenience stores.

We had to go to Somerset to get these pics, but of course you know that I stopped for a salad on the way and didn't eat any artery-clogging fast food. We include the pictures for SE Massachusetts people who have never been to a Sonic. They're rare around here.

The same area of Wareham is also getting an Olive Garden.

As near as I can tell, the Sonic is going onto the property currently occupied by an oil-change shop, so your fries will have a Pennzoil taste to them. The Olive Garden is said to be going across the street from Barnacle Bill's.

How much is too much?

A lonely stretch of East Wareham is now host to a veritable takeout Mecca. You can get Burger King, Subway, McDonald's, D'Angelo's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Wendy's, Krua Thai, Pizza Boy, Rice Bowl and Dunkin Donuts. I'm not throwing Papa Gino's, Lindsay's or Bailey's into the mix, as you can't order from your car there. I'm pretty sure that the 99 only closed because the building floods in heavy rains.

It's the Cardiac Highway!

We're not Food Snobbing anyone. Stephen, one of our writers, hasn't cooked his own food since 2011 or so. However, about one hundred yards of East Wareham, a depressed region of a small town, now has every fast food place in the Northeast.

They could use a White Castle or a Carl Jr's/Hardee's, but there is only so much Cranberry Highway.

Buzzards Bay had a Burger King fail, which isn't easy. Other than the Hooters: Cape Cod and the Falmouth/Kingston Pizza Huts, it is the most high profile failure of a major fast food chain in the area.

You order off this screen, into the sort of speaker that you used to see at drive-in theaters. Someone skates out with it, and you get into the goods. I need both glasses and a taller car.

We passed on the tater tots, as I ate them every day for 4 years in high school. I got the SuperSonic Bacon Double Cheeseburger (pictures below), which came with fries and a soda for about $10. The burger was a-ight, but the fries were Ore-Ida quality.

My meal had over 1500 calories and 2200 milligrams of sodium before I counted the milkshake (it had about 3000 calories with the milkshake... meanwhile, famine victims in refugee camps are happy to get 1200 calories a day), and the unknowable portion sizes makes it impossible to gauge how many calories I stole from Jessica's food. The recommended daily allowance for sodium is 3400 mg, but I consider that to be a piddling sum ascribed to a 105 pound woman. I'm a slim 240 man, so I should get to have twice as much sodium as mortals are allowed. I plan on buying a salt lick and just posting it up in my office somewhere.

I didn't get a pic of it, but when I took the bun and tomato off of the burger, it looked somewhat like William Dafoe.

My copilot got the Chicken Strips Sampler Platter, which was 3 whack strips, more Ore-Ida fries, and onion ring and some toast. That also ran ten bucks, and you can see it below somewhere.

Her chicken did not look like a celebrity.

My man Hardcore Logo got the Chicken Strips Kids Meal, which came with a shake and some Justice League stickers. He didn't let me steal any of it.

The rollerskater (who was a guy) was friendly enough. He's out hustling for his dollar, so I'm not making fun of him. I have had worse jobs. He was the first fast food employee I have ever tipped, aside from the Dunkin' and Marylou's girls.

They must have been out of the Brazilian Man rollerskating waitress neon signs, which is understandable.

Does the population of Wareham have enough kids who know how to roller skate to staff a Sonic these days? You may not want to go there until the girls get their skating legs under them, lest you get a milkshake to the face (doh!) like the cop in the Happy Days intro.

Will this be enough for Sonic- who for some reason can't seem to come to some sort of spokesmanship agreement with the Sega hedgehog- to hold up on the Cranberry Highway against the heavyweights?

We'll goof on the Olive Garden in some future article where we have pictures of one. We consider going to an Olive Garden for Italian food to be akin to going to Red Lobster for seafood. It works if you don't have Italians around to call BS on it.

Olive Garden competing against Mezza Luna should be a devastating loss, but people like franchises. Don't count the OG out of it by any means.

I stole her onion rings before the picture could be taken... because I'm eeeeeevil.

Note that Sonic and Olive Garden are two more businesses who declined to move into (and perhaps revive) the Main Street area of Buzzards Bay. The only big names willing to dance with Buzzards Bay are Subway and Dunkin' Donuts, and we know that Dunkin' would set up in Aleppo if they were allowed.

How much fast food can one region consume? Will the added presence of Sonic be too much for BK or lil' Miss Wendy to bear? Wendy's in Wareham is sort of smelly, and Sonic may just walk them out behind the barn and put them out of their misery.

... or maybe Wareham needs more fast food? Does more fast food exist? Wahlburgers may be a bit high end. I'm not sure if Jack In The Box still exists. In-n-Out Burger or Phatburger (Fatburger?) may not make it here. I'm not sure if dropping a White Castle in Buzzards Bay or East Wareham works, especially for B Double. Chick Fil-A will help along people looking for a less gay-friendly chicken sandwich, but would you run the Bourne rotary for one?

Will the East Wareham economy survive if it is reduced to a bunch of people selling shoddy hamburgers to each other? If that happens, will employees eventually just be paid in hamburgers?

Will the very town of Wareham fracture along supper preference lines, with the higher-end West Ham and their Longhouses and Red Robins break away from their more ghetto McChicken-eating cousins in East Wareham?

Only time will tell.

Playing ring toss with onion rings makes the hardened arteries well worth it.