Long Beach, Jones Beach and Fire Island

After an 8 hour drive from Tawna to Manhatten to pick up Clarence and then do grocery shopping, a few relaxing days at the beach sounded ideal. I booked a beach house Airbnb on Long Beach, Long island to wind down after all the running around. We would be close enough to the City if we wanted to use some more of our Go City passes. We still have 3 attractions to use. I bought the passes with 6 each and we have only done 3 so far in that first weekend. The Statue of liberty cruise only started running from 15th April so we should be good now.
Long Beach is quiet suburbia with marshes on the north side and "long" beaches and boardwalks on the entire southern side of the Island. I guess there is nothing between these beaches and the UK now other than the Atlantic Ocean. Sea fishing is an option and whale and seal watching but Cade seems to be all touristed out and wants to spend a couple of days just chilling.
It has been nice to go grocery shopping and be able to cook for these few days as we have a full kitchen.
Wednesday we took a drive to Jones Beach which is the next island along and then on to Fire island which is the long thin stretch of sand that we saw on our flight in to JFK. I had seen this from the air and decided I wanted to explore it...
Jones beach wasn't much to look at... just a road right through and big car parks along it called Field 1.2.3.4 etc It wasn't quite what I was expecting.. it is very remote and I thought there would be more commercial or leisure buildings for holidaymakers but there wasn't. I know we are out of season but even so it seems it is an island that you drive to, park and just spend the day at on an empty beach.
Fire Island was beautiful.. it is a national state park and a very thin strip of just sand. Looking at the map it is populated all to the north/east. We drove as far as we could which wasn't far and parked up at the nearest car park to the lighthouse. Had a good walk on the beach which was stunning.
After the lighthouse we checked out Google maps that told us we could drive to the cafes so we clicked on one and went.. we passed a sign saying "no vehicles past here without a Federal State Permit" we didn't know what that meant so we carried on going 🤔 🤣 we got to a barricade where a Ranger station wouldn't let us past.
Very confusing as we couldn't work out how to drive to the nice looking part of Fire Island where all the marinas and cafe bars and restaurants were, so we turned back ☹️
Having done research later that night,the Oceanside Sailors retreat it is called is only accessible by ferry. Once on the private complex you can only ride bikes or walk. Such a shame as I would have liked to have seen that part of the Island.. oh well, next time 😃
Thursday I think we will go into the City and do the statue of liberty.Read more