Monday, February 25, 2008

Bishop's Beach at Low Tide


With the full moon comes very high and very low tides, and it is fascinating to observe the change in the landscape as the tides go in or out.

As we were driving into Homer Saturday we noticed the tide was way out, so we decided to stop by Bishop's Beach to check it out. There is usually a bald eagle or two perched on a tree or soaring overhead. I took the above picture on Saturday, but a few days earlier I saw an eagle in the same tree with 10 crows surrounding it, perched on the tree. I'm guessing they get eagle leftovers.

What is normally water with waves crashing over it becomes a huge sand flat firm enough for trucks to drive on (I wouldn't since I don't want the salt water corrosion that can result from beach driving) and people to walk on. It becomes a doggy playland, and on Saturday we saw dozens of dogs capering about, fighting and chasing each other.

We lost a boot gripper that was on Aurora's boots while out walking the flats, but the tide was coming in so quickly that we had to get off the sand flats. We did not find it before the tide washed into the area we had been walking on minutes before.

I expected to find a lot of winter carnage: trash, kelp, driftwood and whatnot, but the beach was really cleaned off. There were some small sea plants and of course shells, but there were no large clumps of kelp and no trash either. Of course we'd just come off a really high tide, so everything had probably washed away.

The picture of the volcano above is either Augustine or Douglas. There are 4 large volcanoes across Cook Inlet from the Kenai Peninsula (Mt. Redoubt, Illiamna, Augustine & Douglas); this is the southernmost one. We seldom see it because it is usually concealed by clouds.

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