Continued from the previous page.

SCENES ON THE WAY TO THE BEACH 

It's another half mile walk to the beach from the Dungeness ruins.

On the way out to the beach I passed other old buildings including the former recreation building, carriage house, servant quarters, machine shop, carpentry shop, commissary, and smoke house. Some of these buildings are used now for park employee housing and offices.

 
This building was the Carnegie's carriage house and servants' quarters.

I also passed some rusted carcasses of old cars and the old Greene-Miller cemetery above the estuary:

 

 

Path to the Greene-Miller cemetery

Visitors can continue straight to the beach on a wide sandy path or add about a quarter mile on an alternate route.

Instead of going straight I dropped down to two long, half-loop boardwalks through the salt marsh, dunes, and maritime forest before returning to the sandy road and reaching the beach. Here are some photos from the first section of boardwalk over the marsh:  

 

 

 

At the end of the boardwalk the trail goes back up through soft white sand. Note the dead tree trunks sticking out of the sand:

 

I walked along the main trail to the beach for a little while before taking the path to the second boardwalk loop. This one went through forest and dunes:

 

 

 

Back on the main trail I soon came to the dunes next to the beach:

 

SCENES FROM THE BEACH

I love barrier beaches with beautiful sand dunes. Cumberland has some of the nicest I've ever seen.

The dunes are almost white and very scenic with all the sea oats growing out of them. Dunes are fragile and constantly moving. Visitors are told not to walk on them so I didn't, although I could have gotten some better photos that way:

 

Some of the ripples and impressions made by grasses blown by the wind are interesting, as are bird/animal tracks through the sand:

In some of the beach photos you can see tracks made by trucks and other vehicles. As this sign indicates, only authorized vehicles are allowed on the beach:

 

View to the south; I didn't go that way. About two miles down the beach is a trail to some ponds.

Here's the NPS map again of the southern portion of the island:

When I got out to the beach I walked north for 1 ½ miles between the Dungeness access and the Sea Camp access points.

I really enjoyed that hike on the wide stretch of sand a little before high tide:

 

Lots of shells had already washed up and more were coming in. I don't think anyone walked that stretch of beach this morning before me because there were some great shells to be had.

I threw several live whelks back into the water and kept five or six empty ones.

That's a live one.

Whelks are large, carnivorous snails that live in temperate waters.  Their shells are similar to herbivore conchs that live in tropical waters. 

There were also live, stranded jellyfish and lots of empty horseshoe crab shells:

 

That's a BIG jellyfish!  I wear a men's size 10 trail running shoe.

I didn't see any sea turtles or sharks' teeth. There is quite a collection of sharks' teeth at the Sea Camp ranger station.

I also enjoyed seeing all the birds at the beach:

 

Around noon I sat on some driftwood to eat my lunch. A lone sea gull walked close to me and waited for a snack; I didn't feed it but took several photos:

 

Two young couples walked by when I was eating lunch, the only people I saw on the beach until I reached the Sea Camp campground.

Continued on the next page:  lots more island scenes, including an armadillo and two wild horses

Happy trails,

Sue
"Runtrails & Company" - Sue Norwood, Jim O'Neil, Cody the ultra Lab, and Casey-pup

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© 2013 Sue Norwood and Jim O'Neil