Campobello Vacations - Herring Cove

We love the beach. Mind you, not to sunbathe on, but to explore. One of our favorite beaches is at Herring Cove. It is on the east side of Campobello and is composed of many sizes of sediment, from sand, to cobbles, to boulders. 

We like watching the waves as they break onshore. They travel the length of the curve of the beach, which is so different from the normal crashing of waves straight onto the shore.

The sound of the waves breaking on the cobble beach is mesmerizing, and I could listen to it all day long...By the way, if you don't have a passport or a US passport card, you can find a similar experience at Jasper Beach in Machiasport, Maine. The beach has a similar shape and is also made of a gazillion cobbles. The Maine Geologic Survey has an nice informational paper on the origin of the cobbles and the geology of Jasper Beach. It is also one of our favorite beaches to visit in Maine;-)

Seaweed gets pushed onto the beach by waves.
Ulva (Sea Lettuce) is bright green in color.
The dark reddish brown seaweed around the rock crab shell is Knotted Wrack.
The light tan seaweed with air bladders is Bladderwrack (Fucus Vesiculosus).
The feather is from one of the many gulls on the beach.

We love walking along this 1.42 mile-long beach in search of cobble treasures. We saw several varieties of seaweed, a few crab shells and claws, lots of gulls, and of course, cobbles galore. Drew walked the entire length of the beach, whereas I only managed one mile before my knees threatened to give way, and it was a slow and painful walk back to the parking area.

Beaches can tell you a lot about the geology of an area, and Herring Cove is a treasure-trove of information. The cobbles are so varied and show evidence of eons of sedimentation to form sedimentary rocks, glacial activity in the formation of the beach, heat and pressure to form metamorphic rocks, and ancient volcanism to form igneous rocks. This link goes to a great Geologic Tour of the Roosevelt Campobello International Park.

The backside of the Herring Cove beach borders Lake Glensevern. This lake was a great place for socialization and tea time, for the Roosevelts and others, many moons ago. Any old structures are long gone.

After passing Lake Glensevern, you can reach the far end of the cove which is called Con Robinson's Point. The beach material consists of sand, silt, cobbles and boulders.

And, on the way back to the parking area, we stopped about half way down the beach to admire the remnants of an old wharf, that stretched way out into the water a long time ago.

And, lastly, here is a little video of the gulls that were hanging out near the old wharf. We couldn't believe how close they let us come before flying off. In fact, they left the shore in waves, with the most nervous birds leaving first, etc. This was the largest group to fly off. They seemed to like the old pilings for perching posts.