Rocks

One of the reasons I love this part of the coast so much is that it's all rocks. Not necessarily rock, i.e., the classic Maine shelves of granite that slope into the sea, but single rocks, lots of them, the kind useless for almost everything except pilfering for the construction of stone walls. We have some granite, but only scattered colonies, which makes them all the more interesting for their rarity. We have a few sand beaches, but they are almost always shingle beaches, the sand covered at high tide, and you have to watch your tide clock in order to run the dog to her satisfaction, or stretch out on your blanket in comfort. The rest of the shore is rocks. One stretch from Ash Point to Lucia Beach seems to have been organized. There are half a dozen stretches where all the rocks are about the same size: first, a hundred yards of brains, then quite a lot of lima beans mixed with apples, then a few feet of walnuts, then a tongue of pink granite, then the sugar sand of Lucia Beach. I have no idea why rocks would group together this way, probably something profound along the lines of crowd behavior or mob action or the littoral equivalent of paranormal crop circles.

The key point here is that the rocks are useless. Ergo, no hordes of people ala Old Orchard, no fancy marinas, no fish processing plants, no motels. Just houses sitting quietly on the bank above the water, and enough wild conservation land at Ash Point to transport you to another time.