The Summer of 100 Beaches began as a response to the COVID pandemic! In August 2020, tired of being cooped up in isolation, I set out on what I called the “10 Week End of Summer Blowout”. Yes, if you start at the beginning of August and add 10 weeks you end up in October. True enough. Having been a year round surfer here in New England that’s nothing new to me.

I had a lot of fun those 10 weeks. I did a lot of camping, biking, and enjoyed the best of New England seaside communities. The seafood is pretty good too. I followed the water temperatures to where they were the warmest. I ended up along the Connecticut shore in Niantic, CT.

The Summer of 100 Beaches combines my love of beaches, summer fun, camping, biking, New England seaside town, good seafood, junky beach food, photography, video, and technology.

So I get asked a lot of questions about this experience. Asked most frequently is what counts as a beach toward the total of 100. And I have a number of suggestions offered as well. This is important. I enjoy camping, biking, and the beach. There’s beaches I like and recently I found beaches I don’t like so much. On a recent trip to Woods Hole and Falmouth along the Shining Sea Bike Trail I went to 3 beaches and rode by about 10 more. Those 10 weren’t worth stopping at for various reasons. Do I visit those beaches just to make the count? No. So what makes a good beach?

• Crowd Conditions. The less crowded the better. Beaches that are crowded and blanket to blanket with beach goers are not good. I don’t want to go there. There’s some big name beaches that are just such beaches. Since I do most of my traveling on off peak days of the week I can often work around the weekend crowds.
• Surfing Beaches. There are 87 surfing spots listed on the surfing website Magic Seaweed from Rhode Island to Maine. None in Connecticut. Surfing spots may not make good beaches in the traditional sense. That’s OK by me and I’m counting them. I’ve got some favorites.
• Beach Culture. New England beach communities are some of the best places to spend time. Especially the old sea ports, fishing villages, and resort areas. The food and the lifestyle are enough to keep me in New England and I love the clams. If clams don’t live in the waters then I don’t want to be in it either.

I’ll be going back to the good places. So if I go back to the same beach because it’s a great beach then that counts for as many times as I go back. I will be going back to a lot of beaches.

For me summer does not end on Labor Day. It gets better after Labor Day. The crowds are gone and the parking is free. I will be going to the beach as long as the water is warm enough to swim and that means about Columbus Day weekend for me. I started in Connecticut on Memorial Day weekend. I’ll work my way up to Maine for late August and then work my way back to Connecticut.

This is all for fun.