Frisket's Tidal Wave Adventure

So, this morning, I decided to take Frisket for a longer walk. I'd been walking her a block or so (sometimes a bit farther to Relish for breakie), and then turning her loose on the tidal flats. I checked the tide chart for today, the 23^rd, and decided it'd be a nice morning to try to walk out to Long Point.

Long Point is basically the tail end of Cape Cod, it arcs about two miles from the mainland back South-Southeast and protects the harbor. For about fifty years in the 1800s there was a separate community on Long Point. Starting in 1850 members of the community moved their homes and buildings across the harbor to Provincetown, with many ending up in the western end of Provincetown. These buildings now have a small enamel plaque identifying them as Long Point buildings.

So, we headed out. I admit I didn't really plan this too well, for starters I only brought a couple of bags, and didn't bring any water or a real camera. But, it was supposed to be a quick jaunt, there and back again so to speak.

So, we head out on the breakwater or seawall, whatever it's called, which is at the western end of Provincetown bay. This thing isn't exactly designed to be walked on, if anything it's outright hostile.

But we persevered and walked the mile out to Long Point.

I let Frisket frolic a bit and then decided to head back, across the bay, since the tide would be coming in soon and I didn't want it to get too high for her, let alone me.

We head out, and I notice something odd: the water was already quite high. Now, by high I mean six inches, but that's almost as high as Frisket's legs.

We continue walking. I take off my sandals because they're acting like flippers and making it much more difficult to walk than I'd like.

The water continues to rise. Frisket...she's not quite swimming yet, but the water is up to her chest, slowing her down. I look around and get an ever so subtle panic attack: the water is rising much faster than I expected, given that I've been here the full week and thought I had a good sense of how much time we'd have.

I look around and decide that walking across the bay isn't going to fly so to speak. Frisket keeps looking back at me with a sort of What the hell did you get us into? look. I decide to cut West, about 1500 feet back to the breakwater.

We start out, but I quickly am in intense pain. This part of the bay has many, many shells. Not so good for barefoot walking. So I try to put my sandals back on, without dropping my phone in the water.

We hit a patch of dry sand but it disappears pretty quickly. Just enough time for Frisket to do her standard roll-in-the-sand thing. She also takes advantage of this brief pitch of dry sand to, ahem, do her thing. Again.

We continue West and reach the breakwater. Now, I mentioned this thing is sort of hostile. It's composed of very large granite blocks, about 8-10 ft long by 3-4 feet on the sides. They're sort of organized into a 20–30 foot heap with some attempt at flat sides along the top.

It's not designed to be climbed, especially by a now-not-so-perky Golden Retriever and her pudgy, sandal-footed, dad.

So, I gauge the rocks and pick out a nice approach. It's not quite the south face of Everest, but it wasn't exactly easy either.

Frisket initially didn't believe what I was trying to get her to do and jumped off the first rock a couple of times before being coaxed to stay on the rock long enough for me to jump up next to her.

After a slow, methodical placement of our six feet, we managed to get back on top of the breakwater. We still had about half a mile of walking to do on the breakwater to get back to land, but at least we weren't out in the bay.

The bay had filled up, where we had turned towards the breakwater was now about a foot under water. Frisket can swim in that, but not for a mile. I checked my phone to see what time it was, it was barely after 9:00. We should have had more time.

We got back to the room at Labrador Landing and I checked the tide chart again.

Sure enough, low tide was around 6:30 a.m., not 7:30 as I'd thought. Of course, it is set for 7:17 a.m. on July 23^rd, which would have been fine if today was the 23^rd and not the 22^nd.

So, in the end we got a good walk (2+ miles), a brief scare, and a huge excuse for a couple of delicious cupcakes from Relish.

The photos I took are also available on flickr.