Shakedown Cruise

Today was our "shakedown cruise" for beach cleaning and bleak is the world I would choose that best describes it. Armed with a big black garbage bag, foul weather gear and some lovely purple plastic gloves for me, we cleaned Covell and Craigville Beaches. It was definitely a two person job: one to hold the garbage bag and one to hold the dog while both of us picked up dog poop and trash. That biting wind did not help! It's troubling how many people don't clean up after themselves or their pets - I like to imagine that if a soda can washes up that it probably blew off a deck or slipped out of someone's hand. They probably didn't just chuck it. One can hope, anyway.

The Hyannis marathon was held today and runners were still dribbling down Craigville Beach Road. As the wind was strong we returned the easy way on the pavement but that put us on the trail of dozens of coconut juice containers discarded by the racers, many still full. Although the coconut juice was maybe not so popular with humans, Grigri loved it! He was fetching containers left and right and guzzling as much juice as he could get out of them. Remind me to train him to fetch other kinds of trash so he can help us!

What did we learn? Rubber gloves are not nearly warm enough in February! A "beach cart" would be convenient to hold the garbage bag - especially since most containers are full of sand or water and extremely heavy. A 40 gallon trash bag gets too heavy to carry so smaller bags are better. It will be interesting to clean this beach again and see if our efforts make a visible difference.