The Spit

The Spit is just nice. That's the honest summary and it's harder to find on this coast than it sounds — somewhere open and unhurried where nothing is being sold to you and nothing is asking for your attention.

Dogs have the ocean side and the whole northern stretch, so on any given morning half the people out there are following one. They go straight in, come out, shake, and do it again, and the beach is wide enough that none of it becomes anybody else's problem.

Broadwater on one side and ocean on the other, sky in every direction and nothing built on it. The wind comes across with nothing to break it, which makes the same stretch of sand feel like a different place depending on the day.

The water at the northern end is the part people make the trip for. Deep and clear close in against the rock wall, with turtles and rays that are ordinary here rather than remarkable, and people snorkel it five minutes from a high-rise.

There are stairs down to it and the current running through the seaway is strong, so it isn't a place to get in casually or to let children in unsupervised.

Pelicans sit along the rock wall in numbers, entirely unbothered, and the boats coming through the seaway pass close enough to hear. On a still morning the whole place goes glassy and you can see straight down into the water from the wall. The sand's pale and coarse and the ocean side comes in hard, and there's no shade anywhere, which in the middle of a hot afternoon is the whole story. The lighthouse at the end is small and plain and everybody walks out to it anyway, and turning back in the late afternoon you get the skyline straight ahead of you and about as much quiet as you'll find on this coast within ten minutes of a tower.