Friday, 05-Feb-2021


Sometimes, I just need to get out of the house… Usually, I’ll head toward the snow and the cold, but thanks to a whole issue with the Mustang being in the shop for repairs, I wasn’t quite feeling confident enough to brave the snow and ice. As strange as it may sound to some, I trust the rear-wheel drive Mustang in the snow implicitly… partially because I’m used to driving it in Bostonian winters, and partially because it has all my emergency gear in the trunk – chains, self-jumpers, extra food, that sort of thing.

Without that safety net, I didn’t feel up to an artic adventure.

Instead, the coast called out to me. Clean, cool air, salt spray, sunsets, clouds, rain and wind.

The drive out was long… and frankly, pretty boring. The little EcoBoost that the shop had given me did fine, but the drive out to the coast has few views aside from some interesting forest scenes. Thankfully the drive went by fairly quickly with a liberal application of loud singalong music, and soon enough I was scrambling down the muddle slope toward the sea.


I’d never been to Ecola point, and it was actually my second choice for a destination – I was originally targetting Indian Beach, but unfortunately the recent wind storms (I think?) had closed the parking lot off… Or COVID restrictions had closed that parking lot? Or… possibly it’s seasonal?

Meh, doesn’t matter in the end. These days, there’s a thousand and one reasons a place may be closed. After parking, my only concern became how to best descend the slope; soon enough I was scrambling down the muddy trail, hand-over-hand down a climbing rope toward the rocky shore. It was amazing – the views were second to none, and the descent itself was worth the entire drive out there.

There was a trail, of course, but I use the term “trail” very loosely in this regard – it was more of a series of braided pathways leading in the same general direction, with a few trail markers strewn liberally about… possibly by rangers, but also possibly by the sea breeze. I… honestly couldn’t quite tell if they were intentionally place, or just detritus blown in on a storm.

The rope helped things, giving me a singular descent point (and peace of mind that, yes, this was an actual trail) to trend toward, and one place to keep an eye on as the tide came in.

I didn’t go too far offshore on the rocks, but I did spend quite a while sitting on the beach. I read, I watched the sun fly toward the horizon, and I just enjoyed the misty rain and the sound of the surf. It’s amazing and beautifully calming, and I was taken a little aback when I realized just how late in the day it had gotten.

A good day, by any metric.