Marshfield, MA Beaches
Living near the ocean in Marshfield is the best! When we do our morning walks, we walk by Ocean’s Bluff and Brant Rock beaches. They offer beautiful ocean and sunrise views while the rock-strewn shore is great for finding pretty shells and sea glass. However, as nice as it is to walk along, there is not much beach to make a day of it with a beach chair. Marshfield beaches require a town beach sticker or you to pay to park without one.
Some better beaches for spending the day at are Rexhame Beach which has a parking lot just over the dunes from the beach with a cute little toddler playground. Green Harbor Beach (aka Burke’s Beach) has a small lot at the walkway and other lots that are a good walking distance away. Sunrise Beach does not have public parking and Humarock Beach is actually in Scituate with minimal parking. These beaches are great, don’t get me wrong, but with a gaggle of little ones, the walk on a hot day can be pretty tough.
Duxbury Beach, MA
We prefer to go to the Duxbury drive-on beach as we typically have some little ones with us. It is much easier to pack up the car and drive to our spot in the sand and unload right where we plan on spending some time. We prefer summer evenings on the beach rather than a hot beach day. We can have dinner and a campfire right on the beach in the evening hours when the wind permits. All of this fun does come with a hefty price tag and imposing restrictions, however. The sticker price for a non-Duxbury resident is $350, significantly less for residents. We got a discount for purchasing early. We have had these beach stickers for many years and each year the season is interrupted for longer and longer periods of time due to piping plover nesting. The last 2 years I don’t think we were allowed out the entire month of July. When the beach is open, they typically split the usage in half between residents and non-residents. When the beach is deemed full for your sticker type, there is no entry. This can be a real bummer when you have a carload of kids looking forward to a beach day only to find out that you are not allowed on. When that happens, we can park in the non-resident lot and walk over the dunes, that dreaded thing we were hoping to avoid by purchasing the high-priced sticker. We still find it to be worth the astronomical cost and seemingly outlandish regulations. I hope the plovers are happy because I am not. Just kidding!
Clamming License
We also finally pulled the trigger on buying a shellfish license for digging clams, oysters, and muscles in Duxbury Bay. Another chunk of change going to the Town of Duxbury ($150). This is something we have wanted to do for a long time as I grew up digging clams with my hands at the beach near my childhood home in Quincy. Retirement has given us the time to be able to do things like this. As with the beach stickers, a clamming license also has its rules and regulations. With our license we received an information pamphlet mapping the digging areas, quantity limits for each type of shellfish and the days and hours for digging. It turns out that there is a very limited season – April (which is gone) and May, then not again until September and October, Wednesdays, and Saturdays only.
Shellfish License
Back in the olden days, when I was a kid, we didn’t have a license or use any fancy equipment. We found a plastic pail and used our hands. We would go barefoot onto the mudflats of Quincy Bay and jump with both feet causing the clams to squirt, or “pee”, as we used to say. Then we would start tearing into the sand/mud with our fingers until we our buckets were full, our nails were filthy and our finger tips were sliced up from our efforts. We would bring the clams home for my mother to cook and serve to us with the hot clam broth for cleaning and drawn butter for dipping. Now, Jim bought us rubber boots and gloves at the marine store near us to go with the clamming fork and 10 qt galvanized wire bucket that we purchased a few years back. Those boots came in handy!!
Clam Digging
Today was our first visit to Duxbury Bay at low tide with the intention of bringing home dinner. We did just that! We dug 6 qts of steamers, a couple of razor clams and about a dozen little necks! We did figure out, though, now that we are old folks, the equipment is very much welcomed. It was a bit chilly today, so the boots and gloves helped keep us from getting too cold. Next time, Jim is going to add waterproof pants, as he found it easier to dig from his knees rather than bent over. His clothes had to go through the washing machine twice!
This brought back so many wonderful childhood memories. Now that we have the lay of the land regarding digging in Duxbury Bay, we will bring some of the kids on our next outing and let them develop some of those core memories as well.
Watch for the next post of how we prepared the clams!
Until then, enjoy every day.
Patti and Jim
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