Trip 45 — Prince Edward Island Walk

Day 3: Locust Valley to Centerport
Thursday, 6 November 2025

Today: 41460 steps/31.29 km/19.44 mi/5h 43m
Total: 130626 steps/102.69 km/63.81 mi/18h 13m

The wind is back up when I leave the Tides Motor Inn at Stehli Beach. No one is in the office, a crafty setup to prevent me from questioning the extra $2.66 they've charged to my credit card. When I checked in last night, I saw notices about card and other bogus fees that were never disclosed in the booking. The bank will cover the overage, I'm sure, but I don't like people trying to help themselves to my money.

Next door is the Bayville Scream Park, and I wish I'd had time to investigate it. I pass a few small eateries and a seafood shop and then enter the main Bayville residential area, where private driveways lead to the shore. Across the Long Island Sound I can make out Connecticut — it must be, although it looks very close on this clear day.

Near the junction with Ludlam Avenue are all the businesses that invitingly constitute the main economic zone, and they're all named for the village: Bayville Pharmacy, Bayville Deli & Pizzeria, Bayville Market, Bayville Seafood. And of course the post office is next door.

If I go straight ahead, I'll get to Centre Island, one of Long Island's most exclusive communities, whose arm curls down into Oyster Bay Harbor. Instead I turn right and cross the Bayville Bridge, and I try to make out the grand estates from the Mill Neck side. A half-hour later I pass under the rail bridge just as a train crosses, having left Oyster Bay — a remarkable coincidence for an underserved line that runs only every hour or two.

I pass a swan pond and am soon in Oyster Bay proper. I used to come out here in the fall for the oyster festival and contemplated joining one of the oyster-eating competitions. But I prefer to give the mollusks the full time required to enjoy them. And could I really hold my own?

Teddy Roosevelt is buried in a cemetery a short distance east of town. He lived nearby at Sagamore Hill for his last 34 years, and he brought his administration here to work from his "summer White House" while in office.

East Main Street becomes Cove Road and I'm in another area of private driveways and grand, secluded mansions. There's more of the same as I climb Moores Hill Road, which brings me down to the last few meters of busy Northern Boulevard: Just ahead it will enter Suffolk County, veer to the left, and continue as Harbor Road and then various other names under the Route 25A umbrella stretching toward the North Fork.

On the left is the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. It's now a renowned center for cancer and genetics research, among other things, but from 1910 to 1939 it had a more controversial function as the Eugenics Record Office. Its director, Harry H. Laughlin, influenced politicians to implement forced-sterilization measures, sometimes bending the truth to support his recommendations. If it had been a weekend, I might have joined one of the lab's public tours.

Instead I try to find an interesting lunch in Cold Spring Harbor whose prices can fit on a personal calculator. Both of the main restaurants — one of which I performed at with a singer six years ago — fail the latter, and a cafe-bakery called the Gourmet Whaler comes close to satisfying the former. The chicken-salad wrap tricks me into imagining bits of meat, apples, walnuts, and cranberries in something resembling their natural forms, but I fail to put enough weight on the fact that it's "a blend" of those ingredients, and as inevitably happens, the result is a mouthful of mayonnaise. The side of tater tots weighs me down like an anchor.

Here, too, there's enough of a money grab that I have to confront it: All the prices come out higher than shown on the menu.

"Oh, that's our old menu," the manager says. "Don't worry, we're getting new menus printed soon." She mumbles something about taxes and credit-card fees.

"But the menu price has to be the price," I say. "Sorry, it seems everyone is adding something that isn't in the listed price."

"Yes, it's the new norm," she says, punching numbers into a calculator and picking at coins.

"Lying shouldn't be a norm," I say. I coax a dollar out of her (slightly more than the infraction) and thank her.

It may sound petty, but I don't think this is even a close call and I don't know why more people don't push back against these misrepresentations. I don't quote a fee for a musical service and then add on an arbitrary amount when the bill is settled. And yes, I do let people pay by card and don't charge them extra. One client even specified that he wanted to use a card on PayPal so he could earn airline points. I happily accepted it as the cost of doing business.

I head up Shore Road — this must be the fifth Shore Road since Queens — and into the community of Lloyd Harbor. Another steep ascent and descent, more mansions, another Shore Road, and along Huntington Harbor, which has more boats than I've seen in any of New York's harbors. Next to it is the community of Halesite. A trolley line used to run from here all the way down to Amityville on the south coast. The rails are gone, but the route survives as bus route 1.

I'm just over an hour from my destination, but my feet are tired, and I stop at the Shamrock for a snack of chocolate cake and ginger ale. The plate of cake is on a placemat with a kind of hyper-ambitious American flag, with 16 stripes and 102 stars. There's something weird about the payment here, too; they take cards but I have to leave the tip in cash.

One more up-and-down, one more Cove Road, and one more Shore Road — this one is Centershore Road, running along Centerport Harbor with most of Centerpoint village on the other side. Warren checks me in to the Chalet Inn & Suites and explains the casual breakfast hours: "At around eight oh-five they'll put out bananas and coffee and hot cereal. And then, by around eleven, it'll be gone."

"And so will I," I say, indicating my obeisance to the checkout time. The motel sprawls around a huge parking lot, and he gestures toward my room the way a tour guide might indicate which mountains occupy a distant ridge.

Nicky's is the reasonable choice for dinner, down a short, curvy stretch of Route 25A (here Main Street) that's too narrow for the traffic and has no walking shoulder. The restaurant is packed; there's no room at the bar and I get the last booth. I have stuffed clams (they stuffed them back into aluminum ramekins, but I'm not too put off) and a pair of pork chops with sauerkraut and applesauce that are too much for me to finish. The service is so cheery that I only half-raise an eyebrow at the illegally applied four-percent credit-card surcharge (it's vaguely worded as such on the menu, but the rule in New York is that the menu must display the credit-card price, and then they may offer a cash discount).

On the way back to the Chalet, I look behind me: I don't trust drivers to see me in the right lane, and I don't want to walk on the left, because the road curves to the left. I've brought back my leftovers, though. Maybe I can use the second pork chop as a shield.

Go on to day 4