MacGougan at Large

Notes on a Trip to Ferry Land - 5

Hedge-istan and Beyond

The eastern end of Long Island has towns, parks, hotels, and farmland. A good chunk of it, though, is what I call Hedge-istan. Long stretches of road where all you see are the hedges that provide a privacy buffer for stately homes.

These aren’t your garden-variety five or six foot hedges. We’re talking ten, fifteen, and twenty foot hedges, somehow neatly trimmed. If you want to be a gardener in that part of the world, I’m guessing that Step One is to buy a cherry-picker.

We drove through Hedge-istan on our way to visit the subject of my previous post, the Montauk Point Lighthouse. We then went up to the bay side of Montauk and had lunch at the Anglers Club restaurant.

The food was OK, but really it was all about the view. There was always something to look at. We were out on a deck overlooking a marina full of sport-fishing boats, with a few super-yachts in the background. Every so often, a small plane would fly overhead, taking off or landing at the airstrip across the street from the restaurant.

Then we strolled through some shops in East Hampton and generously supported the local economy by splurging on a couple of ice cream cones.

Then it was time to make our way back through Hedge-istan to our motel on the North Fork.