Tin Can Alley

This quaint cottage sits on a prime piece of real estate on Gwynn's Island in an area known as Tin Can Alley. Middle Sis and I drove over here on a little sightseeing tour when she was home for Christmas.

Our grandmother used to take us swimming here when we were kids. Click here for that story, written back in 2008 when this blog was just a baby. The post also references this as a public access, which has been up for much very heated debate of late.  I'll steer clear of that argument and only say that when I was a child, it was never an issue to go swimming there.

Also, these pictures were taken from the road, so I wasn't trespassing. I promise.

Happy 2015.

Tin Can Alley II

Here are more jetties from Tin Can Alley. Almost all of these One or two of these may have been taken when my feet were planted outside the boundaries of the public beach and oh so briefly in the sands that make up private property. But it was just for a split second. Or two.

Promise.

I went to high school with the new sheriff in town, so hopefully he'll overlook this slight infraction. To be specific, I actually went to the Prom with him. He was a junior and I was a sophomore. If memory serves, and it may not, he wore a powder blue tuxedo. When I was a freshman, I went to the Prom with someone else who also ran for sheriff.

I'm not sure what any of this means, but one possible extrapolation is that anyone interested in running for Mathews County sheriff should have "Went to the Prom with CBW" on their application.

Sometimes I wonder just exactly what part of my deteriorating brain words like extrapolation are pulled from. Probably the very same section that authorizes and condones a reference to sheriffs, deputies and Prom dates when I clearly started off talking about jetties on Gwynns Island.

Maybe I'm just getting all nostalgic for Friday's 30-year class reunion.

(Or maybe I can't stay focused on one topic to save my life.)

Either way, this word association exercise blog post is now ending.

Have a great day.

Tin Can Alley, Part One

Over on Gwynn's Island at the end of a road that appears to drop off into the Chesapeake Bay is a tiny square of public beach fondly referred to as Tin Can Alley.

Tin Can Alley is the few grains of sand from where
I'm standing to that first jetty.  Beyond that is private property.

Click here and here for previous posts on Tin Can Alley, one of which (the second link) includes the story of when my grandmother took us swimming here.  After a sweltering hot, humid day filled with scalding sand, eagle-sized, biting flies, stinging nettles, and nothing to eat or drink, she "lost" the car keys.  Good times.

Stay tuned for several hundred more photos of the jetties at Tin Can Alley.

Happy Tuesday.

Jetties

These are the jetties at Tin Can Alley on Gwynn's Island.

Mathews County thankfully has several designated spots for public access to the beach and bay, and Tin Can Alley is one of them.

Tin Can Alley is not to be confused with Tin Pan Alley, although Chesapeake Bay Woman regularly does so, even though she realizes one refers to musicians and songwriters in New York and the other refers to a postage-stamp size beach on a sleepy little island in the Chesapeake Bay, worlds apart. Still, CBW is very easily confused and amuses her children by talking about their Xbox 350 (instead of 360) or XCube (instead of Game Cube or Xbox) or asking if they're watching Josh and Drake or Jake and Josh (a television show otherwise known to the rest of the teenaged world as Drake and Josh), among just a few examples.

Anyway.

These jetties have been here for decades, well before those summers in the 1970s when my paternal grandmother took us here to go swimming. We liked to walk along the top like a balance beam and then jump off into the stinging-nettle-laden waters only to quickly scurry onto the scorching hot sand, where we awaited imminent death from the blazing sun that sucked the life out of our skin which had been marinating in very dense salt water. And stinging nettles.

OK, it wasn't quite that bad.  But I can assure you swimming here is not nearly as relaxing as it ought to be based on how tranquil and serene it appears.

These jetties are (or used to be) found everywhere around the island.  Their primary purpose is to prevent erosion.  Based on how long these have been here, I'd say they've done an admirable job. This side of the island, facing east, is on the receiving end of some of our more ruthless storms.

The on-line dictionary says jetties are "a structure extended into a sea, lake or river to influence the current or tide or to protect a harbor."

Looks like some of these jetties need some protection or reinforcement themselves.

Click here for a link to another Chesapeake Bay Family story I wrote in 2008 about Tin Pan Can Alley. But only if you're bored.

Otherwise, have a great day and a great week.