Sunday July 3: Hamlin Beach

Today was my final day in the Rochester area. John and I decided to go to Hamlin Beach State Park. It was a place we went in the summer (usually) all the time growing up (each with our families) but hadn't been to since a few years after we graduated high school.

John knew the route to the park and we had no trouble getting there. The entry fee was $7 (oh, the horror). There were plenty of people there mostly in the central area, probably because that was where the snack bar was. There were lots of families using the grills.

The fact that there were buildings was a surprise. I'm not sure whether they weren't there before or I had just forgotten. There certainly seemed to be more than before. The beaches seemed to be clean (i.e. no dead fish as I recalled) but I wasn't sure about the water. It was cloudy but I wasn't sure what that meant. The beach was broken up by a series of jetties of jumbled large rocks, probably to break up any currents running parallel to the beach. There were also lifeguard stations at each beach section, although not all were manned. I think the jetties were there before but not the lifeguards. It seems a lot of effort had been put into the beach since were had been there last.

The same couldn't be said for the parking areas. Although there weren't any deep ruts that I remember there was grass growing out of expansion cracks all over the place. Seagulls had picked out certain sections of some of the lots to rest in (that hadn't changed). We had fun driving through them although we had to go slowly because they didn't really want to move (we didn't hit any).

After getting drinks at the snack bar we walked out on one of the jetties to try to look at the bluffs at the west end of the beach. Unfortunately, all we saw were trees. So we decided to go to the source. We drove over to the last parking area and walked to the west edge of the beach.

When we got there, all we saw were trees. We walked up to the signs saying don't go past this point but didn't go in. There was a path past the signs but the greenery was dense enough we couldn't see too far past the edge of the trees. I took a few pictures and we left. Thinking about it later it occurred to me that the trees may have been part of the stabilization of the bluffs. Although I remember a few trees the last time I was there (about 1979) and some plants on the ground, I think mostly the bluffs were just sand.