About The Beach

One of the fun things about this island is all the options you have when its time to decide which beach you're going to spend time at.  It's very easy to fall into a "beach" rut, however, and just go to the same place over and over again.


One of the fun things about living here is collecting facts on the places you go . . .


Here's the facts I've complied about the beach our homeschool group visited this week, for any of you that might be interested:

Supposedly John Smith used to stop there on his way from England to Virginia. Yes, the same John Smith who was rescued by Pocahontas.  

It is now run by the government of this island as a park which means there is a fee to enter, but there's also security, nice picnic benches and lifeguards. 

Most people will tell you that it is a very beautiful, natural place. They are right. It is fairly empty most of the time, but right now must be wedding season because there were two weddings there yesterday morning. 

The sand is a gorgeous white, sea is blue and turquoise . . . 

There is a section along that beach that is all native plants and this is very rare on this island. 

And there are homeless people living in "the bush". Before it became a state park people said that if a woman went down there, she could expect to be attacked. There's been some ugly things happen on the sandy shores, if all the stories I hear are true. 

I had never heard about the homeless people before, but yesterday when we were there I saw a man who looked about 30 to 50 years old walk past us and into the trees. One of my friends saw him, too, and she indicated that we ought to get the kds out of the trees and onto the sand. 

So we did. We kind of watched this man. He had his hair braided into hundreds of little braids that were wrapped together to form a cylinder about a five inches wide and a foot tall on his head. He walked a little ways into the trees and exploded into a silent whirl of kicking and waving his arms in circles. What in the world was this all about? 

We kept doing our own thing and the next thing we knew, he was laying in one of the big holes that our kids had dug under the trees in the shape of a recliner. He lay there for a while, relaxing, I guess. Then he climbed out of the hole and disappeared again. 

The next time we saw him he was in totally different clothes. It looked like maybe he had somewhere important to go because instead of shorts and a sleeveless, ratty t-shirt, he was dressed in a neat polo and fairly new jeans. 

Just another one of our fellow men living his life his own personal way. 

Talk to you later, 


Jenn