So Sunday I crossed the entire breadth of Long Island under the reasonable assumption that if I just drove out east far enough, I would find a completely unobstructed view of the horizon for the harvest moon, as well as get some nice snapshots of the scenery. Under that logic I decided to drive, and drive, and drive, and drive, until I ended up at a place called Montauk, which is about as far east as you can possibly go in the entire state of New York before driving into the Atlantic Ocean.

The trip was nice, until it turned into one lane and I had drivers up my ying yang while the guy in front me of course has to drive 20 miles an hour, because what’s the hurry, really? So I’m feeling myself getting squeezed by tailgaters and slow pokes the whole last hour of driving before I finally and mercifully pulled into the town/village/hamlet(??) of Montauk.

Since I had a couple of hours to kill I decided to explore the area, beginning of course with:

Nothing says small town like a good old fashioned burger.

I walked in and the place looked like it was 100 years old. I placed an order for their specialty burger and watched as a few more people came in, still dressed in summer clothes, all of them barefoot.

Clearly there were hicks in New York too. I waited like 10 minutes for my burger, and when I finally got around to eating it, it tasted a bit… fishy to me. No, I mean it really had a fishy taste to it. Bleh. And I HATE seafood too.

Ah well, I made up for that by having pizza instead.

Californian pizza in New York? FAIL

I took a walk through town, not much to it really, just a few stores sprinkled here and there, though I did find an amusing junk store with these signs on the door:

Heh.

I could live in this store forever.

Also passed by a florist too:

Preeeeetty....

So prettttttyyy...

After walking around town a bit, I decided to chance a quick trip down to the harbor before going out to Montauk Point to set up my camera for the moonshot. As I pulled out, I saw this in my sideview mirror:

Thank you world for all these constant reminders that I'm single. Douche balls.

I found a beach that offered a vantage view of the channel boats navigate through in order to enter Lake Montauk, but the beach was infested with flies. I only managed to get two or three shots off before I decided to flee and get back onto the parking lot.

Why yes, the branch DID have carvings of stupid skanky teen couples professing their love for each other. OMG, can I fricking DIE now??

I didn’t take two steps onto the parking lot before I sprained my ankle and spiraled almost face first into the cement before finally catching myself. Oh my goodness. PAIN. I limped the rest of the way to my car and I just knew this day was going to get worse before it got better.

I could still walk though, albeit a bit tenderly, so I started to drive my way back to the state park about an hour before sunset. The water was really amazing. Everywhere you went you were surrounded by water:

Man, don't make any wrong turns here.

The park included the famous Montauk lighthouse, and after paying $6 for parking(??!?), I was finally able to take a photo of it for the first time:

Gee, it looked a lot bigger to me in the postcards...

That’s when I realized I had a problem. The lighthouse was closed at sunset, and the rest of the area was covered in shrubs and trees. It was almost worse than being in the city. I simply had no idea where to find an ideal spot so I could watch the moon rise. So I went up to the beach and started walking around the lighthouse, carrying my camera with the tripod attached. This is what constitutes a beach in this area by the way:

I'm supposed to walk on THIS?

And yep, while I was walking across, I sprained my ankle again. Not as bad as the first time, but just enough to aggravate me and remind me once again that I suck.

The fishermen apparently LOVE to fish in these areas though:

You'll never catch anything! NEVAH!! Ahhhhhahahahahah!

What the flips is this thing??

For some reason I actually thought there would be a manmade sidewalk because I could see a fence in the distance, so I continued trucking along, gingerly walking/limping over rocks until I finally found myself on a rocky ledge behind the lighthouse. Did I say sidewalk before? Well not quite:

You have GOT to be kidding me.

I was already halfway on this ledge before I realized there would in fact be no smooth-as-silk sidewalk waiting for me, and it actually would have been more dangerous for me to turn back since there was a bunch of snot nosed little turdlings that were hopping the rocks around me and blocking the way. I couldn’t believe how unsafe it was. One slip and your boom booms go bye bye as you plunge 30 odd feet to your certain death. On top of this there were fishermen all over these ledges, tossing back their fishing poles at random moments so that God forbid you had the misfortune of being behind them as the bait and line flew over you. Can you say fish food? Oy.

The sun was already beginning to set now, so I made my way through as fast as I could on this crazy obstacle course, with a twice sprained ankle and a camera + tripod leaning on my shoulder. Hop, hop, hop, hop, OW! *&^%, hop, hop, hop…

I finally made it off the ledge, which of course led to an area where I was now sandwiched between two small cliffs, obstructing my view even more. Sigh. There was an unpaved road that led upwards, so I rested a minute or two to catch my breath, than made my way up the road. I still could not see any moon, just shrubs and trees and cable wires and whatnot. I might as well have been in an Amazonian jungle. I walked and walked, the light of the sun slowly fading away, until I came across a gigantic pool of MUD that covered the entire road. There was absolutely no way around it.

Why, God, WHY?

I just stood for a few minutes and looked at it, before finally letting out my breath and deciding that it didn’t look too deep, so maybe if I just hugged the side enough my shoes wouldn’t go that deep into the mud.

So I got as close to the side as possible, then took my first step.

*SPLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH*

Oh Mommy. The pool of mud was like a foot deep. I was completely submerged up to my ankles. I groaned as I plopped through, one SPLOOOOSH at a time until I finally made my way past the pool.

Squish, squish, squish, squish. And then of course I sprained my ankle AGAIN, almost dropping my camera as I stumbled a few feet before catching myself. Man.

By this time, dusk had finally descended, and yes, of course, I still could not see the moon.

I finally gave up and squished back to my car. Before leaving I decided to see if I could get a glimpse of the moon and finally at long last I saw it, even though it was now past its harvest peak. Since I didn’t want to leave empty handed, I swung around and drove back into the park. I must have done several circles trying to find an ideal spot but I just could not find any, except for one spot that was already taken up by some dweebie photographer, and of course he has a girl with him sitting adoringly at his feet while the man gets himself the perfect moon shot. God in heaven, should have driven off the road so I could nail his bony little …

But anyhow, I decided to just go back into the parking lot and get whatever shots I could from there. This was one of the only moon shots I could manage:

Yes it's fuzzy. Yes it looks like the sun. But it's the moon, I assure you.

As for the rest of the photos, I used a bracketing technique on my camera to get shots with different exposures, then used a software program to merge them all together to create what’s called an HDR image. It’s not perfect, but overall, I guess I could have done far worse considering the day I was having.

Probably the best photo I took then.

The final result. Yes that's the moon, not the sun. Shut up already.

With night fully upon me now, it was time to take the long trip back home. I stopped by a Carvel since a day of having pizza and burgers simply cannot be complete unless it’s topped off with ice cream.

The Carvel was empty, so I walked inside an ordered a chocolate cone. Suddenly it was instantly filled up by 30 people. I’m not kidding, in the space of a minute, it was PACKED, including some weird looking elephant-man type dude who felt it necessary to stand two inches behind me while I was waiting for my order. Finally I looked back at him:

“Dude, seriously, a little space?”

He stepped back once, about 4 less steps than I would have liked. The crap was taking my ice cream so long?

Ah, here we go, sheesh. I grabbed my cone, licked and limped back to my car again, and steeled myself for the long, lonely drive back.

Maybe next year will be better.

Tags: beach, burgers, camera, clouds, couple, day trip, driving, flowers, harvest moon, ice cream, ledge, lighthouse, montauk, new york, ocean, photo, Photos, pizza, rocky, town, water
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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