Poplar Bluff beach

I'm sorry if you're sick of beach pictures already, but promise these will be the last for some time. Here are a few scenes from "our own" stretch of beach on Lake Erie near my parents' house. I still can't believe how much I took this for granted. Growing up, I didn't know how it felt to live away from water.

This week I had some blissful nights with the bedroom window open, listening to the distant pounding of water on the shore. Brenna took full advantage of it, spending endless hours beachcombing and digging in the sand. Meanwhile, Marian and I spent considerable time mastering Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the computer game.





These pictures were taken on Sunday, which was relatively calm. The waves started to pick up on Tuesday and Wednesday, so we did some body surfing, but saw nothing like the big breakers we enjoyed last summer. The water, usually soupy warm, was surprisingly cool this summer, almost as chilly as Lake Fletcher.

Unfortunately zebra mussels, a recent introduction to the Great Lakes, made entering the water a perilous venture. The lower beach was covered with smooth pebbles and beyond that lay a nice sand bar, but further out, or wherever larger rocks emerged through the sand, they were covered with tiny, sharp shells. I sliced my feet in several places. I must remember to buy flip flops for our next visit.





The image above shows the lush cover along the bluff. I'm delighted to see dunes forming and dune plants taking root. We had nothing like that in the 1970s when I was a boy. High water levels eroded the shoreline. Most large trees were washed away and everyone dumped tons of limestone rock to protect their property. We had no dunes, in fact we had little beach. The beach started returning about 20 years ago, and dunes have formed over the past eight years.

Lake Erie is much cleaner now than it was 30 years ago. This is partly due to massive efforts by both Canada and the United States, also some thanks is due to the zebra muscles, which filter out pollutants. Erie, being relatively shallow, has responded quickly.

Each night at dusk Brenna and I watched hundreds upon hundreds of ring-billed gulls pour over the treetops and soar lazily offshore, settling onto the water to sleep.