A Visit To The Fort Phoenix State Reservation

We took the troops to Fort Phoenix recently.

The Fort Phoenix State Reservation is a small park in Fairhaven. It is on the site of a Revolutionary War fort, and it is armed well enough to chase off Captain Jack Sparrow.

Military purposes aside, it's a lovely spot to spend a day. We did just that a few weeks ago, and it was cool enough that we're writing now to recommend it to you.

For starters, there aren't that many (there are some, especially around here) parks where the expressed purpose of said park is to Kill Englishmen.

You gotta like that!

That's a cannon-eye view of the mouth of the Acushnet River, the wet way into New Bedford. You may have been some big bad Brit admiral, but you weren't getting into New Beffuh without dealing with the hastily-mobilized toothless farmer enjoying this same view two centuries ago.

New Bedford and Fairhaven were very, very important to the colonial era economy, as well as to the colonial era military efforts. They were active ports, bringing and sending out goods that drove the local economy. They could host American warships. They were also excellent privateer bases.

Of course, stuff like that is going to attract the attention of the people you are at war with or in rebellion against. That's why little Fairhaven has a Marne-like history, with multiple military activities.

Now, in an era where you can whip out the ol' nuclear football, push a button and obliterate 500000 people on the other side of the world, a fort with a few cannons aiming out at the ocean isn't really a big deal. Strategically, Fort Phoenix is a zero.

However, it is (and was) of great Tactical value, especially back in the Day. If you have to sail what is essentially a big wooden kid's fort into the Acushnet River, a bunch of cannons aimed at you from a hill overlooking the harbor is what stereotypical Native Americans in old cartoons call Heapum Big Trouble.

Yes, you could pretty much dictate what would and wouldn't be coming in and out of New Betty by boat if you could put a few cannons on a hill over the harbor. "A cannon on a hill" is pretty much why the English fled Boston not that long after winning The Battle Of Bunker Hill.

The only way to neutralize those cannon was to hack down a forest grove, build a big floating platform for 45 cannons, sail it halfway around the world and send it headlong into direct kill-or-be-killed conflict with a bunch of whiskey-crazed English hinterland rebels. The English felt strongly enough about the Acushnet River that they took more than one crack at just that course of action.

Fort Phoenix is 2-1 in fights with the British, but the L was a big one.

The fort, nameless to me at least, was put up in some form before the start of the American Revolution... perhaps even to fight the French, I'm not sure. True to the hardcore nature of the South Coast, the fort was involved in several fights almost immediately.

Not a lot of people know this, or at least not a lot when compared to those who can tell you about Bunker Hill, but the first naval engagements of the American Revolution went down off of the South Coast.

The British sloop Falcon appeared off of the New England coastline shortly after the entertainment at Lexington/Concord. Both sides were scrambling to get men and supplies up to Boston for the imminent Big Squabble. The Falcon was able to bag two 'Murican ships in one day. One (the Champion) was full of supplies from Maryland intended for the rebels, and they kept that.

The other, a now-nameless sloop from Nantucket, was given a skeleton crew and some scant firearms. It was then sent to Dartmouth (Fairhaven was still Dartmouth at the time), where the Falcon had heard that a smuggler's vessel was docked. They seized that vessel, and went off to find the Falcon. They anchored off Martha's Vineyard for some reason, about 3 miles apart.

The South Coast was having none of that, and assembled a militia of 30 men carrying every gun they could get their hands on. They jammed this militia onto the whaling sloop Success, armed it with two swivel guns, and set off to kick Brit Butt.

Finding the English off of Martha's Vineyard, they immediately seized the Dartmouth ship without firing a shot. They then aimed both vessels at the British sailors on board the Nantucket ship, and closed before the Brits could flee. Shots were fired, and three Limey Poofters dropped.

The Americans then boarded the English ship. English military dudes were among the toughest on the planet. You could dunk them in Boston Harbor in April, march them on soaking foot to Lexington and Concord, and still go 1-1 against every Patriot in Massachusetts. Perhaps the only tougher people on the seas that day were South Coast whalers... especially if they had 30:11 odds.

They took the ships back to the yet-to-be-named Fort Phoenix, and the South Coast had a W in the books against the Empire On Which The Sun Never Sets.

The English had a measure of revenge in 1778. A series of operations known as Grey's Raid resulted in 4000 Brits burning New Bedford in a blaze that could be seen in Newport, Rhode Island. They then destroyed the cannon in Fairhaven before being run off by militia. The fort was rebuilt, hence the rising-from-the-ashes "Phoenix" moniker

The British took another crack at the Acushnet River during the War of 1812. The troublesome British raider HMS Nimrod made a run at New Bedford during action where they also attacked Wareham.

This story has a couple of different endings, one of which looks suspiciously like that of the Army of Two story where a pair of Scituate lighthouse keeper daughters used a fife and drum behind a dune to fool the British into thinking militia were gathering. In this one, it's a bugle or something.

Others say it was a gathering militia and fire from Fort Phoenix which made the British take a pass on tangling with New Betty. There is even a case to be made for the British feinting at Fairhaven to put the militia there, too far away to race the ships to Wareham that were the goal of the English visit. If that was the plan, it worked like a charm, because the British beat ?ham down like she stole something.

The burning of New Bedford's docks in 1778 was done under the orders of Sir Charles Grey. His kid, the 2nd Earl Charles Grey, is who Earl Grey's Tea is named for... something New Bedford and Fairhaven people should keep in mind when making tea purchases. Some people forget, but not Cranberry County Mother***ing Magazine.

Things were pretty peaceful since then, although the cannons are still pointing to sea.

Now, it's a nice little park on a beautiful bay, perfect for grabbing a bench and reading a book. There is a "Charlie Don't Surf" aspect to this park, as the Brits were misusing the park before we got it and put pretty girls with books under the trees there on a nice late-summer morning.

A day spent watching the boats come in is a lot more enjoyable if you don't have to worry about those ships disgorging 4000 British marines to burn New Bedford. A distinctly American primordial urge did jump into me once or twice when I pondered using the cannon against barges and rich people boats that were sailing by, but it passed.

In fact, I had a wonderfully peaceful morning at Fort Phoenix.

Fort Phoenix also has some of the best views that any baller or tennis player could hope for. I'm capable of putting both a full-court fast break pass or an overenthusiastic tennis serve into Buzzards Bay if I'm not careful.

And One should have their games here, the setting would make for some great camera shots. A bunch of 7 foot basketball players running on the shore around may also deter any British invasions that don't have Led Zeppelin in them.

You get a sense that whichever player runs this court can shoot really well in the wind. I can also sense some "losing team has to dive into Buzzards Bay" bets getting made here now and then. That's what I'd bet.

In case you think I was making up that part about using the cannon on yachts....

"Nearer my God to thee," especially up in that tower.

It's just like Washington Street in Duxbury, except that if you take a left at the end of Washington Street, you don't end up in New Bedford.

What the Brits were after... OK, a 1778 version of that, but still....

Seawall Repair In Marshfield

Marshfield fights back against Poseidon this week, as they scramble to repair ruined seawalls before nor'easter season kicks in.

They dodged a bullet last week, as a powerful storm battered the coast for several tides. It never really got biblical however, and things appear to be sailing along well enough this week.

The town is fixing 1000 feet of seawall, mostly along Foster Avenue. It is replacing a wall that has been up since 1931. Recent storms have smacked it around, with the dark spectre of Attrition also having a loud say in matters.

There's no need to fear... FEMA (or the US Army Corps of Engineers, or the DPW) is here. Your tax dollars at work, as they say.

Left without maintenance, these walls would crumble into the sea. When that happens, it opens up the houses of that part of town to direct wave impacts. It also brings about great inundation. Relocation would involve re-settling 10000 souls or so.

That also means losing valuable property tax revenue, business money, jobs, tourist loot and any other of the zillion permutations that would come with telling the Coasties to eff themselves.

It's a lot like gun control.... ideally, there would be no development in vulnerable coastal areas. However, once you have it, it's easier to try to regulate it than it is to go door-to-door seizing property.

"Easier" in this case involves millions of dollars in seawall repairs, but that's cheap when compared to worst-case scenarios.

Joe Deady took the non-blurry, useful pictures.

This wall will be two feet higher than the present wall, and 84 years younger. They'll be using that, uhm, like, modern concrete or whatever they put in that wall. Vauban, I am not.

This maritime Maginot Line is Marshfield's magic against Mean Momma Mer.

Marsh Vegas, depending on how the storm winds blow, sort of alternates the title of First Town That Atlantic Storm Waves Hit Without Breaking On Cape Cod First between themselves, Scituate and Duxbury. This means that she takes heavy shots from the storm waves, and they kinda need the 2015 version of the seawall.

The town (through a loan from a state seawall fund) will split the costs of the project with the state, which will provide half of the necessary cheddar via a grant.

Total cost? $3.94 Million.

If this wall were built by the Donald, it would be taller, thicker, and deeper in the ground... and Mexico would be paying for it.

However, Vegas was happy to pay their half of the loot. Seawalls are like divorce... they cost so much because they're friggin' worth it.

The locals allowed the town some eminent domain mojo, so they can do future repair and maintenance work. From what I saw of this in Duxbury, it may cost you a foot of the lawn if they have to dig down for some maintenance.

That's a small price to pay for a wall that I'm pretty sure is thicker and tougher than the wall in Berlin that the Soviets used to keep the eastern Nazis penned up.

The whole wall is there to protect the Port-a-Potty, which is actually a cleverly-disguised Stargate.

Hawk-eyed readers will notice the 2015 date carved into the top of the stairs. I was gonna park and get a better picture, but the locals are sort of touchy about stuff like that.

Vegas had a tough week, with murder and nor'easters dominating the local news. The people of this particular neighborhood also have had a lot of heavy equipment erecting a Soviet-style cement project just outside their windows. These are the very last beach days, and they've had a few weeks ruined by both storm prevention maintenance and the storms themselves. I didn't want to throw "some moron journalist parked in my road" onto that list.

I never went to school for Journalism, and for most of that time where real reporters were learning Ethics from some professor, I was out learning how to break into cars and stuff like that.

However, I try to be a seamless and respectful addition to any neighborhood I may be visiting.

They still have a lot of work to do for a project that is supposed to be done by December.

Today's entertainment was on 13th St, and they have to get down to 9th for this phase of the project They eventually will go down to 3rd, but I don't have an ETA for that one.

Even if you aren't from Vegas, you should pay close attention to how things go down here. Massachusetts is lined with seawalls, and they cost a lot of money to repair.

Feel free to check our very-much-relative article on seawall repairs that we posted up on the world last summer.

Marshfield is laying the blueprint that a lot of towns may be following as their ancient seawalls fail. This could be happening in your Duxbury or Falmouth beach neighborhoods soon enough.

Otherwise, this could be happening...

Coastal Storm Clean-Up Notes

Sara Flynn on the camera, Sara Flynn's dog on the stick.

This last storm was fun to take pictures of, but it was a D+ grade storm historically, maybe a generous C if you value Staying Power. The dog enjoyed it heartily.

No one, except the guy I photographed jumping the Sandwich boardwalk on a parasail, is going to look back on this storm in 20 years with anyone who will remember what he was talking about. It doesn't merit historical consideration, other than the tragedy down in the Bahamas with the MMA kid.

However, even minor storms can mess up the neighborhood pretty nasty, and things will be a bit ugly until Toil and Tide smooths everything over.

We'll try to give you an idea of how the coastal people deal with storms.

This is an old picture, from a 2006 Duxbury nor'easter, To my knowledge, there were no houses torn apart in this last storm.

If the storm is bad enough to take houses, it goes without saying that the cleanup will be lengthier and more complicated.

Some storms can even alter the look of the neighborhood forever. To keep it Duxbury, I can recall the Blizzard of '78 being the end of the road for cottages in front of the dunes. The 1991 Halloween Gale knocked over the last of the 1950s-style cottages, and future gales will put the rest of the neighborhood up on stilts.

Again, this storm wasn't a home-killer. We're just establishing one end of the spectrum for the discussion.

The next level of storm is where the houses are up, but the road is ruined. This is the Ocean Bluff/Brant Rock area, after one of last winter's blizzards. That's not a dirt road, that's heavily-used and trust-me-it's-paved Route 139.

The ocean, when it moves from shoreline to street, isn't just water. It is moving large piles of sand and stone with it, as well as anything that might be in the yard of whoever owns the land the ocean is washing through.

When I was trapped in my house for the Halloween Gale, you couldn't stand in front of a window, even on the second floor, when waves were breaking on the house. Each wave would slam a Shirley Jackson story worth of stones off of the house. That's why you board the windows up, player.

Those stones also wash past the house, and that usually puts them in the street.

Sand also shifts, remember...

This was the most damage I saw working the Sandwich-Barnstable-Yarmouth-Dennis run during the storm last weekend. Some DPW guy can sweep that ish back up onto the dune or whatever happens to it in this town.

Duxbury usually has the other sort of problem, with the ocean slicing through from ocean to bay. That makes parts of Duxbury Beach- as well as Saquish, where people live- into islands. Most of the town's effort after the 1991 storm involved making the beach whole again.

Otherwise, people get cut off, supplies get low, panic ensues, and the people from the Gurnet rise up and slaughter the people of Saquish for food and goodies.

Even tony Sandwich takes her lumps now and then.

Sammich is located on the wrong side of the Cape Cod Canal jetty, and it gets very little replenishment sand from more northern towns.

Prior to the construction of the jetty, this was the sole benefit that Sandwich gained from nor'easters. Once the jetty was up, Sammich was having sand washed down the beach from them without getting any sand washed down to them.

This eventually leads to large chunks of Sandwich being claimed by the sea. The sea then starts touching things that she isn't supposed to be touching, like highways.

It's probably not going to come to that on Route 6A, at least from what I saw this weekend. There were some houses taking shots, and I'd bet that they lost a lot of sand.

If the street an the beach got messed up, you can bet that the wall that was supposed to be protecting the street has been compromised.

Seawall repairs are ugly business, for several reasons. One, if you need them, you most likely just had a damage-doin' storm. Two, seawall repairs are costly, with coastal towns sitting on potential seawall repair bills running into the millions. Three, there will almost always be a fight between homeowners, the town, the state and the US of g*d-damned A over who will be footing the bills for the seawall repair.

I am related to at least one guy who had to run down to Town Hall and wave deeds and contracts in their face before getting off the hook for thousands of dollars worth of seawall repairs that the town was supposed to pay for.

You have to watch the towns, as they try to get off "cheap" on the repairs now and then. Duxbury, which can hardly plead poverty, had a wooden seawall until the mid-1950s.

This is more of the Brant Rock/Ocean Bluff damage from last winter. If the elements and the budget won't let you build a fancy seawall, a bunch of boulders will have to do.

You just want something tall enough to slap down even huge waves, and you want it heavy enough to not be washed away when the Atlantic Ocean leans on it. If a little bit of water gets by it... well, hey, you live at a beach, right?

If you don't build a seawall, the ocean gets to tee off on you for 5-12 waves a minute for 3 hours of nor'easter tide, twice a day, any time the pressure drops. You want to try to avoid having that happen.

Seawalls are like divorces.... they cost so much because they're worth it. The town and state will complain, but it will get fixed in the end. The alternative- again, like the divorce- is too ugly to countenance.

The seawall houses in Duxbury are known for their beautifully maintained lawns and just-like-God-planned-it soft sand yards. Oh, wait... this is a post-blizzard shot of Duxbury Beach.

I swear to God that one of those houses in this picture above (the foreground, with the ice) is owned by a golf course groundskeeper, and his lawn is kept at putting-green-trim levels all summer.

In order for that to happen, you have to shovel (or hire someone to shovel) the beach back on to the beach. My yard on Ocean Road North would pick up what I would conservatively estimate to be 1000000000 rocks every nor'easter.

Rocks are handy to have around if you, say, need to fill large holes in your lawn.

Once the yard is cleared, it must be repaired.

Even after you fill the large holes (snow doesn't count, lazybones!), you still have problems. All of your grass has been washed and soaked on salt water.

The Romans, after razing Carthage, covered the ground with salt and sea salt. They salted it down because, as Sam Kinison said, "Nothing grows in sand, nothing's gonna grow in sand!"

Grass is no exception, which is why beaches tend to be sandy. If you want the grass back after a storm ruins it, you have to skim the top layer of soil and replace it with unspoiled topsoil. Then you plant the grass, and then you see if you removed enough salty soil.

This is why some people say "Screw lawns," and just go with natural sand yards. It turns out that these also require tireless maintenance. I did that with the patio near the seawall, as we would lose the front 10-20 feet of lawn with every storm.

This wonderful beach scene, as we noted in a previous article, would be perfect sand-water-dunes-lifeguard chair Cape Cod if this were not the parking lot of Sandy Neck Beach.

It'll all wash away at some point. It's marshy over there, and the DPW can sweep up and re-deposit that sand where it belongs. A parking lot is less of a touchy maintenance job than that of a million-dollar Hyannis Port beach house. You can't just let the Kennedy Compound drain, and then hire some townie to sweep it up whenever.

This can be touchy with October storms, as no coastal resident with any brains makes yard repairs on the nor'easter damage until late April. June through October is hurricane season, but October through the Ides of April is noreaster season, and we get several storms a year.

The beach suffers during those storms. People like the natural aspect of a soft-sand beach, in theory. In reality, "natural" beaches look a lot more like the picture with the dog at the beginning of the article.

The tide will take care of the lower beach, but the upper beach can get a little bit ugly.

Anyone who lives on a seawall knows this scene, represented perfectly by Duxbury Beach.

Several somebodies let the storm sneak up on them, and didn't take their stairs up (in the local patois, stairs are taken "up" onto the seawall, as opposed to being taken "down" from the seawall) in time. The stairs bang around in the surf until there isn't a seawall to prevent them from being tossed up past the wave-wash.

Eventually, you sneak on the beach with a Jeep (the "Duxbury Cadillac" of legend, in case you heard the term and never knew the reference), tow the stairs back to your house and hopefully store them a little more securely.

Duxbury Beach gets lots of odd stuff washing up. Every now and then, a barge loses a cargo container over the side, whch busts open and disgorges her contents into the sea. They eventually wash up on the beach somewhere. One winter, it was oil filters. Another winter, it was Nikes. If they had EBay in 1980, I would have sold more sneakers than that Air Jordan motherf***er.

Lobstermen get caught slippin', too.

For reasons I don't know but that some salty dude (or dudette, the only lobsterman among my Facebook friends is a girl known to me as Tornado) could tell us, wire pots don't wash ashore as much as wooden pots do.

When I was a kid, we'd go out after every nor'easter and snag lobsters out of the wooden traaps that washed ashore. We'd get several dozen this way, as pots, buoys and so forth were all over the beach.

You never steal the pots, however, and even the buoys were a rough proposition. I don't know if lobstermen can shoot you for touching their gear, but I know that many think they can... and that's all that will matter if the heat comes out on you, friend.

This is the Mystic River, courtesy of Paul Walker... no, not THAT one.

While this isn't ocean damage, what you see here are leaves. Those leaves, still green, should be up in a tree, getting ready to be in my fall foliage shots.

If those are lily pads or something, just try to work with me here.

Massachusetts, and especially Eastern Massachusetts, doesn't really get around to fall-foliaging until late October. Some places on Cape Cod (I noticed this while bell-ringing at the Sagamore Christmas Tree Shoppe) don't even go over until mid-November.

That overlaps with the October-April nor'easter season, and is one of the many reasons why coastal Massachusetts isn't really top-notch foliage country. We rock pretty hard compared to, say, New Mexico, but New Hampshire people laugh at our foliage... they LAUGH at it.

Of course, they don't have ocean storms up there, so they can just shush now.

Cheapest And Most Expensive Gas By Town: South Coast Edition

Gas used to cost a dollar a gallon, but that was a couple of two-term Presidents ago.

There's not much we here at CCM can do about that. Heck, there's not much that BArry and George Dubya could do about it, either. Both of the last two Presidents made their run at the $4 mark, and while Bush has the overall Highest Price Ever title, Barry has never had gas as low as Bush saw it (either before 9/11 or after the economy collapsed on him in 2008-2009). Elephant or Donkey, the Oil Man s gonna get ya eventually.

Of course, how badly the Oil an gets you is directly influenced by how hard you shop. If you cn save a dime a gallon and you fill the tank once a week, you save a buck or so (math skills, and brains in general, are not my forte). With 52 weeks a year, that's like $50 or something. Inflict that sort of savings on several areas of your life, and you can go to the Patrots game, trick out your car, hire a high-end prostitute... the world is your oyster, player.

What we can do towards that end is use a certain website to find the gas prices reported for your town in the last 36 hours. You can go to that site yourself (we recommend that you do), but we've done the legwork for you this fine Tuesday morning.

The national average for a gallon of regular Unleaded is $2.29, and the Massachusetts average is $2.18. A barrel of oil is going for $46.55, if you know any Saudis.

The cheapest gas in Massachusetts is $1.89 in Southbridge, the cheapest in EMass is $1.92 in Brockton, and the most expensive is $3.49, by a station owner who should be whipped in Newton's town square.

Wareham 

Low = $2.13, Maxi Gas, Cranberry Highway
High = $2.19, Mobil, Cranberry Highway

Marion
$2.17, Cumberland Farms (sole listing for town)

Mattapoisett
$2.25, Mobil, County Rd

Rochester, Acushnet, Freetown, Berkley, Dighton
(no listings)

Fairhaven
Low = $2.03. Valero, Bridge St
High = $2.30, Manny's Service Station

Fall River
Low = $1.94, Sam's Club, Grinnell St
High = $2.49, Tony's Gas And Repair, Brightman St

New Bedford
Low = $2.05, Joe's Gas, Nash Rd
High = $2.39, 7-11, Rockdale Ave

Lakeville
$2.09, Joe's Gas, Taunton Street (sole listing)

Dartmouth
Low = $1.99, BJ's, State Road
High, $2.39, Shell, State Road

Westport
Low = $1.99, Supreme Gas, State Rd
High = $2.39, Pine Hill Gas, Pine Hill Road

Somerset
Low = $2.13, Speedway, County St
High = $2.39, Shell, Wilbur Ave

Swansea
Low = $2.11, Sunoco, Wilbur Ave
High = $2.19, Columbus Energies, GAR Highway

Cheapest And Most Expensive Gas Prices: South Shore Edition

"Now I got a reasonable economyyyyy...."

Gas prices are one thing we can all agree on. Even guys who own gas stations want the lower, as lower prices at the pump would men that the station was getting it cheaper, too.

Our last two Presidents have had gas prices rise and fall on them. George Bush set the all-time record high price in the summer of 2008, but Barack Obama has made a run at the Bush Line more than once.

To be fair to the GOP, Barry never got gas as low as Bush had it, either before 9/11 or after the economy collapsed in 2008.

That's all neither here nor there when your needle is on E and your wallet isn't doing much better. That's where we come in.

Were going to use the Massachusetts Gas Prices website to tell you the highest and lowest gas prices in your town for the last 36 hours. You could do this yourself on that site, but we have all the good stuff here already, and you'd be wasting valuable Surfing energy that could otherwise be used for cat memes or German pornnography. You're welcome.

Prices change, and the price that the spotter reported on Saturday may not be the price you pay tomorrow morning. Sorry about that, hoss.

We'll do this article repeatedly, so it may be to your advantage to check in... and especially note f the same dudes are turning up in the High or Low section consistently. I wrote this column on Cape Cod for several years, and several towns were getting straight milked by the same few stations... still are.

Here we go, prices from late Monday afternoon:

Plymouth
Low = $2.09, BJ's, Shops at the 5
High = $2.49, Gulf, Court Street

Kingston
Low = $2.11 (Gulf, Speedway, Cumberland Farms)
High = $2.15, Mobil, Main Street

Duxbury
Low = $2.29, Bennett's, Tremont Street
High = $2.39, Gulf, Hall's Corner

Marshfield
Low = $2.05, Public Petroleum, Ocean St
High = $2.17, Shell, Ocean St

Scituate
$2.39, Shell (no other prices listed for Scituate)

Cohasset
$2.19, Stop & Shop (sole listing for town)

Hingham
Low = $2.15, Express Petroleum, Derby St
High = $2.29, BP, Pond St

Hull
$2.17, Kenberma Food Mart, Nantasket Ave (sole listing)

Weymouth
Low = $2.04, Prime Energy, Bridge St

High = $2.29, Mobil and Sunoco, Middle St

Quincy
Low = $1.99, US Gas, Adams St
High = $2.49, Shell, Squantum St

Boston
Low = $2.09, Petro Plus, Cummins Hwy
High = $2.99, Shell, Mass Ave

Pembroke
Low = $2.11, Gulf, Church St
High = $2.25, Mobil, Church St

Carver
Low = $2.09, Mobil, Tremont St
High = $2.12, Tom's Auto Service, Main Street

Plympton
(none reported)

Middleboro
Low = $2.05, Irving, Harding St
High = $2.19, Shell, Bedford St

Halifax
Low = $2.09, Cumberland Farms, Monponsett St

High = $2.17, Mobil, Plymouth St

Hanson
Low = $2.05, Speedway, Main St
High = $2.19,Main Street Auto Repair

Bridgewater
Low = $2.05, Prime Energy, Broad Street
High = $2.39, Mobil, 24 SB

East Bridgewater
Low = $2.01, Tri Town, Franklin St
High = $2.19, County Gas, Washington St

West Bridgewater
Low = $2.05, Motion Gas, Main Street
High = $2.37, Mobil AMVETS Memorial Hwy

Whitman
Low = $1.99, Diamond Fuel, South Ave
High = $2.03, Cumberland Farms, Temple St

Brockton
Low = $1.92, Prestiige, North Pearl St
High = $2.19, Mobil, Belmont St

Abington
Low = $1.99, Sunoco, North Ave
High = $2.14, Suoco, Center St

Rockland
Low = $2.03, Go Go Gas, 820 Market St
High = $2.09, Steve's Auto Service, Liberty St

Hanover
Low = $2.03, Super Petroleum, Center St
High = $2.19 (2 Shell's, a Sunoco and a Mobil, near the Hanover Mall)

Norwell
Low = $2.39, Suoco, Accord Pond Dr
High = $2.69, Mobil, Washington St

Cheapest And Most Expensive Gas: Cape Cod Editon

Barry failed to pass the Bush Line for all-time highest gas prices, although Dubya saw lower gas prices under his reign than Obama did. Granted, they came either before 9/11 or after the economy was collapsing... Either way, a confident President Obama was happy to pose in local colors for our photographers in front of a Russian petroleum outlet during one of his recent state visits to Wareham.

We admit to spamming a lot of useless stuff over those Internets at times. You most likely won't be changed permanently by our coverage of 2 foot waves lapping up against Chapin Beach, or our visit to a Plympton pumpkin patch. I won't say we're 100% useless, because we might amuse you, but we're not really utilitarian.

Today, we plan on bein' Mighty Useful to you. We're going to go town-by-town and list the cheapest and most expensive gas prices you can find there. We're using the Massachusetts Gas Prices website for or numbers, and it's like Monday morning or something. These will be the prices reported to that site over the last 36 hours.

There may be some variation to the prices, as the price some station in Chatham is charging tourists on Saturday might not be what he's trying to run by the locals on Monday. We're just doing what we can for you, people.

Here we go:

Provincetown
Best = $2.42, Cumberland Farms, Shank Painter Rd
Worst = $2.45, Gulf, Bradford St.

Wellfleet
Best = $2.35, Wave, State Highway
Worst = $2.39, Mobil, State Highway

Orleans
Best = $2.33, Speedway (South Orleans Rd) and Cumberland Farms (Rte 6A)
No higher prices reported

Harwich
Best = $2.27, Mobil, Whip O Will Lne
Worst = $2.35, Speedway, Main St

Dennis
Best = $2.13, Mobil, Theophilis Smith Rd
Worst = $2.45, Shell, East-West Dennis Rd

Yarmouth
Best = $2.19, Speedway, Iyannough Road
Worst = $2.29, Shell, Station Ave

Brewster
$2.37, Main St, Mobil

Barnstable
Best = multiple at $2.19, on 28 and 132
Worst = $2.39, Mobil, Iyannough Rd

Mashpee
Best = $2.21, Stop & Shop, Falmouth Rd
Worst = $2.27, Shell, Nathan Ellis Highway

Falmouth
Best = $2.21, Cumberland Farms(2), Mobil, Sav-On, Johnny's Tune And Lube
Worst = $2.25, Mobil, Palmer Ave

Sandwich
Best = $2.27, Speedway, Forestdale Road
Worst = $2.39, Gulf, Route 6A

Bourne (Cape)
Best = $2.19, Gulf, Bourne Rotary
Worst = $2.29, CITGO, Sandwich Road

Bourne (Mainland)
Best = $2.12 (cash), Mobil full-serve
Worst = $2.29, Shell, Canal Road

Martha's Vineyard has the 3rd (CITGO) and 4th (Shell) worst gas prices listed on the site, $3.19 at both spots on Vineyard Haven. The worst in the state is $3.49, at a Newburyport Mobil. The cheapest gas listed was $1.93 at both Speedway and Prestige in Brockton.

Surf Check, Round 3

We worked the northern shore of Cape Cod for this article... not really because it's better than Scituate or Duxbury, but just to get a better feel for the region. We're in this game for the long haul, and we may as well use lesser storms to pick up some local knowledge.

We went from Sandwich to Dennis, but the camera didn't like wet work. As bad as these pics are, know that they were the GOOD ones.

This was the waning storm tide, very much sustained by the high winds.

We also wanted the north-facing aspect, as the wind had shifted somewhat.

Some good old-fashioned Yarmouth sea foam.

Water, sand, lifeguard stands., dunes, snow fencing... everything you want from a beach... too bad this is the Sandy Neck Beach parking lot.

In high winds, it's better to shoot from behind sand and stone.

I wish this came out better, I had elevation on my side here.

The storm did her best to get the roads sanded.

One big difference that I have noticed between northern Cape Cod and South Shore beaches is that the Cape can sometimes get away with a jetty-style wall.

The storm god of Dennis.

My Duxbury people got some better shots.

You can get some nice shots from upper decks over the seawall.

Our Mommy photographers are not at all afraid to stick their cameras into the belly of the beast.

An annual post-storm tradition in Duxbury is the Stair Harvest.

Jumping the Sandwich boardwalk with a parasail thingy in a nor'easter ROOLZ.

Said boardwalk in Sandwich

Beach plum berries are ready!

If you ain't from Town Neck Beach, don't come to Town Neck Beach.