Trip 46 — Long Island Walk

Day 13: Bridgehampton to Center Moriches
Tuesday, 18 November 2025

Today: 60742 steps/47.25 km/29.36 mi/7h 59m
Total: 601179 steps/467.00 km/290.18 mi/81h 14m

In the clarity of the morning, having slept two-thirds of an ideal night, I notice the special details of my room at the Bridgehampton Inn. There are two chocolates next to the canister of water. The towels and washcloths number ten in total, and there are about 15 branded cardboard coasters. Best of all, I find the remote control for the fireplace. It would have been nice to use it last night, but I put it on before breakfast and set in front of it my wet socks, which I forgot to unravel after yesterday's incident at Georgica Pond.

I don't realize until now that my shoes are full of sand. I dump the contents into the trash, and I transfer as much of the sand as I can into there from my shirt and the bottom of my backpack. I was too tired last night to bother with it.

My room rate includes breakfast. The dining area is enormous — three rooms and a bar, because the inn has an upscale restaurant. I have an omelette with goat cheese and sausage, forgetting until much later that it was supposed to come with a fruit plate. There's no jam or butter provided with the toast, and no substitute offered for non–coffee drinkers. On the way out, I become the second person this year to write in the guest book, lauding the fire and not mentioning the strange breakfast.

Normally I'd leave earlier than 10:20 for such a long journey, but I had to sleep. I'd also misremembered today's distance. It was six kilometers longer than I had in my head at the outset — that doesn't sound like much, but it's an extra hour in the dark.

Nevertheless, it's a beautiful, sunny day, and I start out fast and happy. This section of the Montauk Highway has plenty of walking space, either in the shoulder or on the sidewalk, and the traffic isn't too bad. In Water Mill, on a broad green, I pass the windmill built in 1800. It looms large, but it's Long Island's smallest windmill.

A car stops and the driver calls out to me. "Taxi?"

The car isn't marked as a for-hire vehicle. I laugh. "No."

A car wouldn't get me onward much faster than walking anyway. Between Water Mill and Southampton, the road is clogged with vehicles, in part because of road work. I feel especially sorry for those on the 92 bus and the Hampton Jitney, delayed because so many people insist on driving solo.

Just before Southampton proper, Route 27 turns to the right and becomes the Southampton Bypass — that horrible road where I was stuck waiting for a gap in the speeding traffic. Here it begins innocently enough, next to a shopping plaza.

Southampton town is just what the Abecedarian Walks should be: a sidewalk next to a road with a reasonable speed and light traffic that passes the town hall, the post office, and various restaurants and shops. West of the town, a string of six or seven cannabis dispensaries occupies land belonging to the Shinnecock Native Americans. There are a couple of eateries as well, but the museum devoted to the tribe is no longer functional.

Little markers of history pop up. An ancient stone slab near the bypass entrance shows distances to Montauk Point (29 miles), Quogue (13 miles), and Good Ground (the former name of Hampton Bays, 8 miles). Later on, in East Quogue, a marker flanked by two cannons designates the former location of an oak tree to which the country's first letterbox was attached. It became part of a stagecoach mail route between Greenport and Brooklyn in 1787 but was probably used as early as 1765.

I see the white markers of the Paumanok Path, a 130-mile trail from the Montauk Point lighthouse to Rocky Point, mostly off-road but concurrent with the Montauk Highway for a while. Eventually I pass North Road, where I turned up last week toward the horrible bypass, and for a kilometer or so I retrace my steps at the South Fork's narrowest point, the only walkable crossing over the Shinnecock Canal.

In Hampton Bays, I need a break. The area is less upscale and more ethnically diverse than the Hamptons farther east. I have my choice among Mexican, Salvadoran, Italian, Irish, and various Asian cuisines (the Salvadoran El Nuevo Diamante is where I ate on the way out). There's room for someone to open a bagel spot in the area and I only hope they call it Oy Bays Schmear.

But it's the dive bar called the Bays that gets my business. They're playing the Quick Draw lottery game here, too, and there are stations set up for sports betting, plus pool, pinball, darts, and Ms. Pac-Man. Fox News is on ("Democrats doubling down on trans rights fight") and one of the four guys at the bar is complaining about how much it'll cost to fix his truck.

Dina is the bartender. The dreadlocked man nearest me is Abe. He's talking about how Americans will sue each other over the tiniest issue and take things like vultures.

"There's a house east of here, two houses past the church," he says. "The guy was put out of his home, and they put his stuff all over the lawn. You can see it if you go by."

I must have passed it, but I don't remember the scene.

"People came like ants to sugar, like savages," he goes on. "They picked through everything."

He finds out I'm walking. "Don't walk at night," he says. "There are drunk drivers. We have a lot of crashes."

"Two days ago a kid was hit right out front here," his neighbor at the bar says.

"I'll buy your vest," Abe continues.

I've considered a reflective vest, but I have mixed attitudes about it. It's like the warning-light buttons at crossings: Drivers should be aware and not rely on special attire to see something as subtle as a human being. "He wasn't wearing a vest" should never be an excuse in court. I do put my flashlight on when it's especially dark, however.

"Well, I've got to go rake the leaves," Abe says. "Somehow all the leaves in town blow in front of my house."

I can't fathom how a $15.95 burger and a soda result in a $28.50 bill, but I don't challenge Dina. The patrons are friendly but it seems like the kind of place not to start trouble.

I have two hours until last light and 24 kilometers to go. Half of what remains will be in the dark. With my pace refreshed, I notice a blister forming on my left heel. It's the first significant blister of the trip; I've been lucky.

I bear right onto Old Country Road and walk through East Quogue and Quogue, passing the Quogue Wildlife Refuge and hearing the hum of an aircraft behind the forest at the Francis S. Gabreski Airport. It was built in 1943 and served as an Air Force base until 1969. It's still used privately and by the National Guard, as well as by a helicopter rescue service. When Bill and Hillary Clinton visited Steven Spielberg at Georgica Pond in 1998 and 1999, they arrived here in Air Force One.

I rejoin the Montauk Highway as it gets fully dark. It's reasonably well-lit and accommodating, alternating sidewalk and wide shoulder. I go through Westhampton, Speonk, and Eastport, power-walking at nine minutes per kilometer. The trip down East Moriches Boulevard is eerie, with a fenced-in barking dog, the rustling of unseen animals, a quarrel in a yard, and a man hacking up a lung — or maybe it's a large bird in distress, or a hyena — somewhere down the Little Seatuck Creek.

But then I'm back on the Montauk Highway for the final easy stretch to tonight's AirBnB. I'm not very hungry, but I cross the street for some raw oysters and clams, shrimp-corn chowder, and salad. Back in bed, I peel off my socks and realize that the blister is due to a hole in one of them. And I'm grateful that tomorrow is a much shorter day.

Go on to day 14