County Beaches

In a week and a half, a handful of bloggers from around the country will convene in Mathews County sight unseen other than what is portrayed here on this blog.

Note: That opening sentence scares the living daylights out of me. What on Earth was I thinking?

Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to meeting all of the smart, witty, interesting, gifted and talented people on the other side of the computer screen. But holy mackerel--most of them are traveling quite a distance, even clear across the country, just to see little old Mathews. Mathews County.

What are they expecting? Have I oversold the place and its natural beauty? What will they say as I announce, "And here is Hyco Corner and here is the old Sibleys and that used to be a Ben Franklin and that's where Foster's Department store once thrived"? Do they realize just how much driving is involved just to get to a convenience store? Do they know about the drinking water situation? What about the fact that my ice maker doesn't work?

And what about these beaches I've been talking about? To me, they're beautiful because they're completely undeveloped. To anyone else, they might be dreadfully boring.

So, to properly set expectations, I thought I'd head to South America for about a month or whenever the Blog Fest Protesters leave town, whichever comes first spend some time in advance of next week's Blog Fest talking in a bit more detail about just what it's like around here, starting with our beaches.

Mathews is a peninsula surrounded on 3 sides by water, but much of that water isn't visible from the main highway. Although some of the most beautiful views are on private property, there are several public beaches (Haven Beach, Aaron's Beach and Bethel Beach Nature Preserve) which front the bay and provide an abundance of water vistas.

They're all identical pretty similar and consist of this:

1. Marsh on either side of the road heading towards the beach.
2. A rather narrow beach of white sand peppered with sea grass, sea glass, driftwood and various other odds and ends which wash ashore.
3. A view of the Chesapeake Bay which is only water, waves and sky for as long as the eye can see. (The picture above is a good representation.)
4. Horseflies, mayflies and/or mosquitoes depending on how much wind is blowing.

That's it. The End. Most of these beaches are not for swimming either. (Blog Festers will have the chance to swim if they choose on Saturday night over on the island.)

But if you're looking for a nice, quiet, desolate place to bury a corpse stretch your legs, watch some birds and swat some flies snap some great pictures, these beaches are perfect.

Coming up on the next episode of Chesapeake Bay Woman Freaks Out Over Blog Fest: The importance of having a car since we are at least 275 15 miles away from any sort of civilization up to and including Wal-Mutant.