Hike #715; Corson's Inlet to Stone Harbor

 Hike #715; Corson's Inlet to Stone Harbor

7/28/13 Corson's Inlet to Stone Harbor with Brandan Jermyn, Stephen Argentina, Jason Kumpas, Amanda Murphy, Krisanne Pederson, David "Captain Soup" Campbell, Jack Lowry, Susie Duncan, Carol Van Giezen, Daniel Stone, Michelle McBriarty, Rick Brack, Georgette ?, Gopal Baliga, Sreeni Nair, Sally ?, Jennifer Bernt, Alexa ?, Mary ?, Larry M.

Hiking the beach

Our next hike, also the next to cover the entire perimeter of NJ would be "jumping the gun" a little bit, due to an accident on my part. I accidentally posted the Corson's Inlet to Stone Harbor section ahead of the Margate City to Corson's Inlet hike, which is actually the next section I had wanted to do. Regardless, I would plan for that section the next month and connect it.

This time, we met at Stone Harbor Hobie Beach, which turned out to be an excellent place to park that was not at all full or had any fee to park! Perfect spot. We then shuttled north to Corson's Inlet State Park, again with no fee. We began by walking the bridge over Corson's Inlet, Bay Avenue. There were some spots where we could walk out onto the beach. There were two bridges from here, the second one partially over Strathmere Bay. Only Stephen and I went out onto the beach and the rest stayed on the road.

Jason Itell and Megan Reid met us at the beginning, but Jason had an injured leg and would just meet up with us along the way because he wasn't able to safely do the entire mileage. He nearly got himself killed again on his mountain backpacking, and explained that he had to heat up several nalgene bottles full of water to keep himself warm at night.

Once we got into Strathmere, we reconvened next to a restaurant on the south side of the bridge. We then turned left over a swath of grass to Commonwealth Drive. I stopped to chug some water, and continued. A lady told me that was private property on the swath, and I apologized for stopping there. We moved on, and Commonwealth led directly to the first beach access, totally free. We headed to the beach where I realized I was missing my camera. I had taken several pictures on the bridges, and can't believe I'd have lost it. I ran back to the bridge twice, and checked all along the street. Sally had somehow managed to get lost form our big group, and I was trying to talk to her on the phone regarding how to catch up. On my second trip back for the camera, she still hadn't reached the correct spot, so she ended up meeting up with the rest of the group before I got back.

After not finding the camera, I took a leap of faith and knocked on the first door on Commonwealth near to where the lady told me the swath of grass was private land. A guy answered the door and a guy answered, and told me he hadn't seen anything. I was upset, and thanked him for his time, and started moving on, when the lady I saw earlier ran to the door and handed my camera to me. She told me it was in the grass right by where I stopped to drink my water. I was so happy to have it back. I thought I'd lost it for sure.

I headed happily back to the beach access, and we all headed to the waterfront of Strathmere Bay to follow the south bound beach.

Strathmere had a few life guards, but not many. The beach was a lot less crowded than many of the beaches we pass through. We headed from here into Sea Isle City. This area was very overcrowded. It probably gets worse, but this was an overcast day. While we were walking, the girls headed up off of the beach to use a restroom, and I neglected to tell them that if you leave the beach, you can't get back on without paying the beach fee.

We all ended up walking back to the boardwalk and followed that for a time. A mean lady checking beach badges told me we weren't allowed to walk through. I assured her that we were allowed to walk through at water line, and that we didn't come in from any of their accesses. She of course wouldn't let us back on.

We followed the board walk, and probably caused the greatest excitement of their day. They were radioing each other and phoning, and we were followed by some sort of cart along the paved walkway along the beach.  At the end of it, we ended up going and walking the parallel street just so we didn't have to deal with the beach badge nazis. We probably annoyed them even further by singing songs while Jack played his carbon fiber guitar. We started off with "Besame Mucho", which I sang quite loudly. Jack was also making up his own song about how this was a beach hike, but we weren't hiking the beach, and there was no swimming.

We eventually got away from the areas that were checking and meandered back to the water front, heading south. Captain Soup took the lead and we headed to Townsend's Inlet where there was another bridge for us to cross. We cut to beneath the bridge and to another access point and a nice parking lot. We took a break there for people to catch up, and sang some more songs on a park bench.

From here, we crossed over the bridge over Townsend's Inlet. The bridge was sort of narrow, but okay for walking with some nice views. We turned from the bridge to walk the top of a sea wall on the south side. This sea wall went to the left on the other side and led to the end of Inlet Drive in Avalon. There were several places to head back out onto the beach, but signs not to walk on the sea wall from this point on unfortunately. We followed some side streets parallel with the beach for a while and stopped for some food at a small place called Tortilla Flats. It was pretty good, but we were stuffed! I don't remember the last time I felt so stuffed on a hike!

We made our way from here directly to the beach. A few cut out at this point; Jason and Megan stopped to chat before they left with Alexa, and a few others headed directly back to the cars at Stone Harbor while the rest of us finally stopped to swim.

Usually I stop to swim a lot earlier, and I was going to before people went to use restrooms in Sea Isle City, but that set us off a bit. The water was great, but we were stuck at a life guarded beach so we couldn't swim all that far out. Every time we got a little ways the whistle went off. Even when I could touch bottom but chose to swim instead, I heard the whistle. So annoying.

After the swim, we headed south on the beach through Avalon. At the south side of town, the beach was fenced off and some sort of work was going on. There was a big machine with water spewing from it. It turns out it was probably some sort of drill making footings for a new dock or something. We had to turn right around the outside of the fence, then head along it to the other end of the fence where we could get back to the beach after climbing over a pipe that read "do not climb". There was sand piled over it for beach access. We also saw some dolphins out playing in the water along the way. Jack and I explained things about songs with meanings to Stephen while we walked. He seemed to like "Mother's Little Helper" by the Rolling Stones.

We continued south along the beach and saw a dead blow fish. I'd never seen one before, so that was sort of neat. It seemed like a long way on the beach, but we finally made our way to Stone Harbor and headed in to the Hobie Beach parking lot to finish off the hike. It ended up being slightly more than what I was planning on doing, but not too bad. It was a really nice beach hike, and I only wish we did more swimming. There's always the beach hike next month. Good times are in the pipeline!