July 2017
No trip to Newburyport in the summer is complete without a day on Plum Island. The sandy beaches and blue ocean are the perfect setting for a beach day.
If laying on the beach isn’t your thing, check out the walking tours of the island led by Bill Sargent each Sunday at 2pm.
Discover horseshoe crabs, terns, and striped bass. Bill even purports to have a woolly mammoth on his tour… but don’t hold us to that! View the effects of last winter’s erosion. Changes did occur over this past Winter and this Spring. Mother Nature is in charge!
Investigate the Coast Guard archaeology site and speculate on whether some of the artifacts could have been used to set U-boat nets across the Merrimack River. Visit the Sand Machine where up to an acre of sand flows through natural weirs in the South Jetty during high course tides. Discuss how the Army Corps of Engineers, the city of Newburyport, universities, and colleges have all been working together to work with nature and find a solution to the rapid erosion on the point.
The 90-minute walking tours will run from North Point’s Plum Island Lighthouse to the south jetty and back, rain or shine. Parking is available in the Plum Island Lighthouse parking lot.