Montauk on the Mind
How do DHS Students Celebrate their Christmas Break?
By Annabel Schneider - 10/01
NEIRAD enilno edition
As the weather gets colder it is easy to dream about being on a beach tanning under the summer sun. Montauk, New York may be the place you envision in your head.
Montauk is a small fishing and surfing town at the very tip of Long Island. Montauk is a 3 1/2 drive from Darien. It is considered part of the town of East Hampton. It has a population of 3,851, but during the summer the numbers shoot up. Driving down the Montauk highway, hotel after hotel with flashing “No Vacancy” signs dot the landscape.
Unlike the Hamptons where you go to be seen, Montauk is a place to go not to be scene. In Montauk you can feel comfortable wearing old jeans and a baggy sweatshirt. It is a great family vacation spot.
The great thing about Montauk is you can get two experiences in one. Being at the tip of Long Island both the Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean are easily assessable. And at the point there is a big lighthouse where the two bodies of waters collide.The beaches at the Sound are nothing out of the ordinary. They are similar to Weed Beach and Pear Tree Point Beach in Darien. Gin Beach is the most popular on the shores of the Long Island Sound. Gin Beach has had sand brought in making the beach soft. Culloden Point Beach is scattered with drift wood and boulders the size of a car. The beach is not as soft, but it is the number one place to find sea glass and other shells and mementos.
For avid fishers, Culloden Point Beach is great for surf casting. There are boulders on the edge of the water and a couple feet in more boulders are nestled that make it the perfect place to stand. But Culloden Point is not a place I would recommend swimming. There are no lifeguards and the ocean floor is impenetrable with sea weed and rocks and maybe a few critters.
The ocean is my personal favorite place to go when I spend the day at the beach. I am not a surfer, but Ditch Plains is famous for the surfing. The one downside is that there is very limited parking and one must get there around 9a. Just down from Ditch Plains there is the swimming section of the beach. The waves are perfect for boogie boards, and body surfing. The down side is there are times where there are small jelly fish ater that cannot do any damage, but it doesn’t tickle when they sting.
The most famous attraction is the lighthouse and light house museum. You are able to climb to the top where you can see all of Camp Hero. Due to the erosion the shore has had an intricate wall of boulders in front of the house. The wall is fun for climbing on or walking across or surf casting. When the tide is low enough, there is a look out tower that fell with the erosion during a storm, that, if small enough, one can fit through the tiny hole in the bottom.
The days you aren’t at the beach can still be a lot of fun. Montauk is 15 minutes from East Hampton and some days when you are tired of the beach it is fun just to shop or see a movie. Downtown Montauk has some cute shopping too, but not as ostentatious as the Hamptons.
In the middle of the town there is a green which hold multiple festivals such as a big art show, a clam chowder festival and more.The food gets a little pricey, but it is fresh out of the ocean. Gosman’s Dock is a plaza on the dock by Montauk harbor. Besides restaurants and little shops there are multiple charter fishing boats. It’s really cool to watch the fish come in and be filleted.
Another fun event is the shark contest. When the sharks come in you can watch them being weighed on a giant scale and then they cut them up. One year when I was there I got to hold a fresh cut heart in my hand. The cool thing was it was still beating.
The famous shark from Jaws was actually inspired by a great white shark caught in Montauk by fisher Frank Mundus. He caught the beast on a small 17-ft ship that went by the name Cricket. There is a fiberglass life-size model displayed at Gosman’s Dock.
Another popular attraction is Camp Hero, the once secret military base disguised as a fishing village during World War II. It is a great park to go hiking and it does wonders for the imagination. Stories about the park still running underground and in the locked buildings at night keep people very curious. When you are there you can see the sealed bunkers and what looks like a little town. Airplanes flying overhead during the war would have expected the town to be anything out of the ordinary beneath the surface. The other feature is the radar tower built during the Cold War.
If the Caribbean is not in the price range, Montauk would be a great place to vacation to experience the couture of the Hamptons, but the laid back feel of a fishing village. Keep dreaming. Only six months until summer.
Montauk Point Lighthouse
