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-   -   Silver Sands Beach and a Tombolo (What's that?) in Connecticut (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/travelogues/213221-silver-sands-beach-tombolo-whats-connecticut.html)

This is a tale from the time when my wife and I were living in Connecticut (CT), USA.

July 2014

A friend of mine used to live in Milford, CT, by the sea. His home was very close to a beach named Silver Sands beach. We visited it once in 2014 and it was a beach like any other, no big deal.


As this screenshot from Google Maps shows, this beach is located off of the super busy I95 (South) interstate highway and is pretty close to these landmarks (not shown in the maps screenshot):
* WWE's headquarters in Stamford, CT
* A bit off the coast but still in Milford - the home of the famous Black Hawk and Chinook military helicopters
* Fisherman's wharf is pretty close to this beach

So anyway, there we were, on the beach...I was initially unimpressed by it.









Wait, what is that lone island doing there off the coast? It wasn't until I got home that night that Google/Wikipedia told me about it. That wasn't just an island, but a Tombolo.

Q: What's a Tombolo?
A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombolo

In essence, it is an island connected to the mainland by a narrow strip of land which remains submerged during high tide periods.

So that was a Tombolo, huh? Whoever gets a chance to walk to it at a time of low-tide must be so lucky. It isn't much, to be honest, but how often can one part the sea and walk across it after splitting it asunder? When will one ever begin to understand what Moses felt like as the Red Sea parted for him?

Anyway, Google also told me that the island was the restricted site of a bird conservatory. You couldn't even roam around on the island even if you could get to it.

And that was the end of that as far as I was concerned.

July 2015, on a lazy weekend

Wifey and I were bored beyond belief. We decided to go to the same old Silver Sands beach.

Once we got there, I began to snap pics of the birds there...




And behold, I found people walking to the island! Fortuitously, a low-tide had exposed the submerged strip of land leading to it and the cops were allowing people to walk there. So it was that we walked on to it:







These birds were busily pecking away at some vestiges of marine life on the walkway-


Wifey deemed it fit to walk quickly. She was worried about the quickly setting sun.

Some more birds along the way-



Once we got to the island, we found that most of the area was cordoned off to preserve the birds' natural habitat over there. I took one passing shot of some nests that could be faintly seen atop the trees there. A raucous cacophony of bird calls could be heard at that point in the air:


We were meanwhile sandwiched between the sea and the protected part of the island. We were literally walking on sea-shells and it proved tricky to walk on them, as they cracked beneath our feet constantly with every step. Snapping pics was the last thing on my mind; it was not that it was particularly hard experience, but it was an immersive experience. The sea-shells beneath us, the calling birds, the wind and the marine smell of aquatic life and salt in the air just made me forget that I had a camera with me. I regret not taking more pictures than I did.

Kayakers going at it:

The pets gotta enjoy boating too!


The sun began setting currently and people began hurrying back to the mainland:

A seagull was looking for grub in the gathering darkness:

And pretty soon, we found ourselves back on the beach:


As we sat down for a while to gather our thoughts, a passing elderly couple offered to take our snap. Maybe they felt nostalgic of their own nomadic youthful days and they felt like our own moments had to be captured, for our own sake. We handed over our Nikon digicam and gladly obliged:


In retrospect, 5 years down the line, the overall experience back then was a welcome deviation from reality. We have a raucous 4 year old running amok in our lives now and we have since shifted back to India. I look forward to other such experiences and I also realize that I need to get my old photos uploaded to the internet before my 10 year old hard disk calls it a day! Most of these photos were taken on our dormant digicam (another relic of times gone by!) and we used to save them to the good old hard disk...

I will look to publish more travelogues with these forgotten photos and am glad to be able to share these experiences here.

Thread moved from the Assembly Line to the Travelogues Section. Thanks for sharing!

Will be going to our homepage shortly :thumbs up.

Hey LocusJag!

I lived Milford, CT (Robert Treat Drive Apartments) from Sept, 2017 till May, 2018 before shifting to India. I have been to this beach for a couple of times and now surprised to read that the island can be reached when there is low tide.

Thanks for sharing this !

The terminology is new to me. I do remember 2-3 places that are tide dependent, the most famous being the Mont St.Michel castle in France. In our part of the world, the Narara Marine Park near Jamnagar is tide sensitive, third being a Shiva temple in GJ (forgot the name) where you can walk across at low tide.

I've been to the beach at least 5 times since my friend lives there and it was but once that the narrow spit of connecting land exposed itself. I suppose it is not surprising that many Milford residents don't know about it.

Even our very own Ramar-Setu is listed among the known Tombolo formations worldwide (the list is in the Wiki article I'd alluded to in post #1). It is highly possible that the other ones you've referred to are other examples and it is probably time for you to edit the Wiki page and add those 2 examples there. I don't see them there as yet.

Photographs are Windows to the Memoirs. Beautiful remembrances and well shared besides raising curiosity to readers. Well done.

I live in West Haven and I was looking for new places to explore around this county. I have heard of Silver sands beach, but never been to it before! Will go there once the lockdown is lifted :)

Milford is an absolute beauty! I love the place! Orange too is awesome. As a grad student here, its the only time when I can explore all these places clap: