Long and Short beach are located in the town of Nissequogue on the North Shore of Long Island. Both beaches are accessible by a ~20-25 mile bicycle ride to the west from our home base in Stony Brook. The weather forecast for the weekend was sunny and hot (too hot for me) so we decided to leave around 8 am from campus. After some minor repairs and bike maintenance we left around 8:30. The basic plan was to follow 25A to St. James and then Moriches road north to the beaches and then on the way back, to avoid busy 25A, we planned to follow the coast on Harbor Road back to Stony Brook village and to campus.
The weather was nice, the traffic light and we got to Long Beach in no time. There with Avery’s help I found a recently placed geocache (GC1Q3PY). The place was deserted so it was quite easy searching for it, although I can not quite imagine doing so in the middle of the beach season. Our original plan was to continue east from the beach to the end of the peninsula and get to the north of the Stony Brook harbor. Unfortunately, the road leading there is private and the original plan was scrapped – much to my dismay. You can see the peninsula we wanted to visit when you look north from the Stony Brook harbor, across the Porpoise channel.
Long Beach, Nissequogue, NY
The view of Stony Brook University Hospital from Long Beach
Long Beach, Nissequogue, NY
We some spare time on our hands, we decided to ride to Shorth beach, directly to the west of us. The terrain in the area is quite hilly, since all the roads at some point or another crisscross the moraine, left by the retreating glacier. Especially the hill right after Long beach was quite hefty, only surpassed later by a steep climb at the intersection of Boney Lane and Long Beach Road. We passed the David Weld Sanctuary and eventually arrived at Short beach that just started to fill up with people. Regrettably, I didn’t have the location of the geocache and my attempts to get in touch with someone who could get them to me were unsuccessful. We had lunch on the beach and cooled off in the still considerably frigid Long Island Sound.
Arriving at Short Beach
The ride back was quite torturous, as the hot weather, fatigue and plentiful hills started to take their toll on us. We were in need of some serious refreshment, so we scrapped the original plan to take Harbor Road and headed back to 25A where we saw the Saint James General Store and a gas station several hours earlier.
Saint James General Store
Unfortunately, we paid the toll of riding on a busy 25A with either a non-existent or severely damaged shoulder (going east). We took the first chance to get off and rode down Shep Jones Lane, past Avalon into Stony Brook village and then on quiet village roads back to campus. All in all, the ride was almost exactly 24 miles long, a considerable accomplishment for some on a one speed bike. In retrospect, we should have started much earlier in the day to avoid the heat. Lesson learned.
Elevation profile of the trip (Stony Brook to Long and Short Beach and back)
Trip Stats
Distance 38.7 km (24 miles)
Min Alt 0.618 meters
Max Alt 97.711 meters
Max Speed 40.8 km/hour
Avg Speed 7.0 km/hour
Download kml file for viewing in Google Earth.
I enjoyed the pictures and the map tour.
Thanks for putting this together. Very cool.
I like the part on a Short Beach
Anyway, well prepared story !