There’s free miniature golf at the ferry terminal. It has has everything you need if you want a fairly challenging but spartan nine hole course. No flags, but the sound of the ball rattling in the cup is as satisfying here as anywhere else.
Except for one hole . The Abyss.
The second to last hole, perpetually damp sitting under the pedestrian bridge, is deep. Very, very deep. Deep enough that it swallows light. Go ahead, try to see the bottom. Disturbing.
Even more disturbing, perhaps, is the echoing voices.
Go ahead–stand a foot or two away from the hole and shout something. (Maybe not Beelzebub, why take chances.)
Most folks will look at you as though you’ve lost your mind, and maybe you have. Better to lose your mind than to lose your soul.
I would drive a long way to taste a damn good brew, but fortunately I do not have to,
We have the best beer in the state right here in North Cape May. Cape May Brewery is really, really good. Gusto Brewing Company is even better.
Our merrie crew hunkered down on Sunday, and despite the delightfully cool and dry climate inside the brewery, opted to drink outside in the garden. (OK, don’t get overly romantic here, you want lush surrounding and Adirondack chairs around a fire pit, go to Cold Spring Brewery, but know you’re going for the scenery.)
I brew beer, My son and his girlfriend brew beer. My daughter and my son-in-law brew beer. We used to brew because we wanted exactly what we wanted. Gusto makes a good case for letting someone else do the work.
We tried several brews, all of them excellent, but two stood out, one for its cleverness, the other for its skill.
The Inside Joke: Tangerine+Peach Créme is a fruited sour with a creamy, rich mouthfeel and a complex (in a good way) estery swirl of flavors, but to describe it that way makes it sound too serious. It’s fookin’ good without being cloying.
The Real Fake Doors is a better bitter, done exactly right. The Fuggle hops were spot on, balanced perfectly by the crystal malt. I felt like I was back in London, experiencing the sounds and aromas near the Thames. It is not hard to make an ESB, but it’s difficult to make it just right. This was a fookin’ home run.
We also had the Slam Poet, a classic IPA that shows off by not showing off, and the Little Spoon oatmeal stout, also good stuff.
The menu varies, as it should, and the staff has always been nothing but friendly. Our first visit was four years ago, when the tour consisted of a card and a formal signing in a composition notebook acknowledging you took the tour, but now a quick glance at the wall (and the merch) suffices.
But don’t tell anybody, The Atlantic City Press damn near ruined our beach a few years ago, and things got pretty crowded for a bit. The beer here is as good as beer gets. My fear is Gusto gets too successful. Until then, we’ll keep sharing our oasis with folks who stumble down the shore, as long as they keep it semi-secret.
If the place is too hoppin’ (it is summertime, no?) grab a 25 oz crowler of a 64 oz growler. They also carry 4-packs.
Nope, not the fireworks, though shooting up major fireworks into the teeth of a thunderstorm squall, though that does make for chaos.
Hours earlier, when the Scott Avenue beach looked like the Fourth of July scene in Jaws, a two year old was digging in the sand.
And two year olds are really good at digging, and soon he had a small pool to play in.
He stumbled upon some horseshoe crabs, as happens often in early summer, and his Granddad buried them again, to await the next high tide.
And then, miraculously it seems, the pool filled with tiny horseshoe crabs, spinning and swimming and looking as exuberant as late June lightning bugs. They spun and swam wildly with an exuberance too many of us no longer recognize.
These are “older” horseshoe crabs, weeks old instead of minutes, reared by Rutgers in Lower Township. Photo from”Rutgers lab churning out baby horseshoe crabs,” Washington Times, 9/27/2014 (AP Photo/Wayne Parry)
We tried “saving” them, most of them anyway. Hundreds, maybe thousands ,were sent into the bay.
And maybe one or three will survive the next decade and return to the beach as mature adults. laying eggs for a 12 year old child to discover again.
Every year thousands creep their way to the edge of their world and celebrate the long June days as only a critter around for hundreds of millions of years can.
They came before the dinosaurs.
The only other humans on this half-mile patch of beach were a few kids flipping exuberant males back on their many feet, their parents drinking at the local watering hole across the street.
A few moments earlier, only a few of the critters were visible, but cued by voices humans cannot hear, they rose from the waters, seemingly in unison, to creep to the top of the tide line.
An hour later, most will be gone. A few will not return to the water, their gills a treat for the gulls.
In a couple of weeks, the high tide will help release the few of the millions of new critters that survive through June.
Most will fall prey to the ghost crabs, the gulls, the grackles, the killies and kingfish. The Audubon Society folk will praise the eggs as fodder for the red knots, perhaps easier on human eyes but certainly not nearly as interesting as these creatures from the depths of the bay.
Decades ago I stumbled on thousands of horseshoe crab babies, moments before they emerged from their now transparent shells, spinning and spinning as if anticipating their release.
Ghost crabs spend their winters right here in North Cape May, snuggled a few feet under the beach in their burrows, waiting for spring.
You get through winter several feet under the sand. You greet living again after a long months in your dark wintry tomb. And then you keel over at your doorstep as the sun sets, again, on your patch of Earth. There’s a lesson here.
If the beach is not crowded and you sit real still (their eyeballs work real well), you can see them going ghost crabby things during the day.
Enjoy their company and try not to step on their doorways. They’re locals, after all.
The mayor has taken “capture everything” to heart, and plans to use the drone to patrol the bay looking for “people who allow their dogs to off leash” in an effort to save our officers time.
Maybe Mayor Sippel should ask us which we prefer–putting up with the occasional ( and usually well-trained) off leash doggie or some five-figure eye-in-the-sky buzzing away as we (attempt to) enjoy serenity along the bay’s edge.
A drone-free evening on the edge of the Delaware Bay.
Having an officer stroll along the beach without the high tech would better serve all of us, a gentle reminder that there’s a human under that uniform.
And for those who occasionally nurse an ale or two, be forewarned. First they came after the dogs, then they came after the Dogfish. Heads.
The bay has settled down a bit–still wild, of course, always wild, but behaving today.
Scott Avenue entrance to the beach
January is rough on local humans but it is devastating to much of the rest of the living around here.
These guys (Hemigrapsus sanguineus, or Asian shore crab) first showed up around 1988–you can find them all over now, and apparently they are as edible (shell and all)as they are damaging to the native species.
Asian shore crab–a tasty menace
Gannets are usually seen in the spring and fall. Their fluorescent white wings tipped with deep black are marvelous, rivaled by their unreal blue beaks, usually only seen up-close in death.
The bright red of blood, the ghostly white feathers, and the stunning blue beak look out of place on the dull wintry beach.
A vulture feasted on yet another dead bird, now beyond identifying. The vulture sulked as I approached, took a low flight around me, then returned to its carcass as I was leaving.
The days are lengthening again, and the beaches will be filled with humans again soon enough. For now the sand pipers and the herring gulls rule the roost.
