Comments

  1. says

    I know you don’t have an ocean out there, but aren’t there some lakes not too far away that are pretty great? Maybe a trip there would tide you over.
    I know, easy for me to say, having spent my whole adult life an hour’s drive or less from the Pacific ocean (believed to be the largest on the west coast). I’ve always thought I would miss it somehow if I lived thousands of miles away, even though I rarely visit anymore.
    Cute kid, by the way. And, as always, I’m obligated to say: that’s some bad hat, Harry.

  5. Akira MacKenzie says

    I’ve never been to the ocean. Most of the rest of the family has gotten to one of the coasts, but I was never afforded the opportunity and I don’t have the means to travel on my own. The closest I have to an HUUUUUGE body of water is Lake Michigan.

  7. charley says

    Rialto Beach and Second Beach are epic. Piles of enormous driftwood logs, eagles, stacks, colorful anemones and starfish, seals popping up in the water, stones rattling back and forth in the surf. And ominous signs wth tsunami evacuation instructions reminding you that you could be swept into oblivion.

  8. says

    …having spent my whole adult life an hour’s drive or less from the Pacific ocean (believed to be the largest on the west coast).

    Um…what’s the second largest ocean on the West Coast?

  10. birgerjohansson says

    If you are at a “peripheral” sea like the Baltic or the Bothnic you can be pretty far from the ocean and still worry about drowning. But at least there is very little tides. Or maybe that is a bad thing for biodiversity.
    I tend to think from an “avoid danger” perspective.
    (BTW the tidal vortice outside Norway is nothing like Edgar Allan Poe described it)

  11. birgerjohansson says

    Charley @ 7
    Driftwood logs.
    In the 19th century an icelandic fellow built a sail-powered car to travel along the shore in search for driftwood, as Iceland had nothing like those huge logs for construction.

    I have often fantisied about finding sunken driftwood at an anoxic spot on the seafloor, so you get a dendrochronological record of the forests around the sea going back an arbitrary period.
    Of course you would need to use isotopes to locate where each individual tree grew up, a non-trivial task.

  12. Jazzlet says

    Birger there are places where you can find the fossilised or semi-fossilised remains in situ, there’s one off the west coast of Wales that I visisted a couple of years back. That one isn’t always visible, the sand comes and goes, so you need to check whether it is covered or visible.

  13. pacal says

    Well Minnisota is not on a ocean but it is on Lake Superior, which is by area the second largest lake in the world. Only the Caspian Sea is larger. And on that gigantic lake you will get ocean type weather.

  14. Silentbob says

    I wish someone would take me to the beach.

    Dude, there’s no spiders.

    (You’d have to bring your own to play with.)

  15. magistramarla says

    PZ, you should come for a visit!
    I can see a small part of the Monterey Bay from the windows at the back of our house.
    We live exactly one mile up the hill from the beach.

  17. brightmoon says

    I could walk to the Atlantic in about an hour or 15 minutes if I take the bus