As most of the northeastern United States is in the middle of experiencing the Blizzard of 2026, I am home from school on a snow day, and reminiscing about my recent trip to Florida.
On Saturday, February 14, we touched down at Tampa International Airport around noon in sunny skies and the temperature was 77 degrees. Coming from what has been a frigid and snowy winter in New England, it felt like arriving in paradise. After grabbing the rental car, we made our way to the Gulf Coast for our stay in Madeira Beach. Our journey had begun very early that morning – we had to fly to Chicago for our connection – and we were hungry! First stop, Sea Dog Brewing, Treasure Island.
That’s a Sea Dog Blueberry Wheat beer – delicious and refreshing along with my bacon and havarti burger and a view of the intracoastal waterway:
Next was a stop at the local Publix grocery store for some snacks and such, then on to check in at Barefoot Beach Club.
The view from the room was not too shabby!
Gulf Coast sunsets are spectacular, and the first night did not disappoint.
The morning dawned with a more subtle beauty that was meant for a beach walk.
About half a mile to the south is John’s Pass, a busy shopping and restaurant area. From the beach you can see the drawbridge that allows taller boats out of the pass, created by a hurricane back in 1848, into the Gulf of Mexico.
Can you see who is waiting for me at the edge of the water?
My friends have started calling the great blue heron a “Karen’s Heron” since they magically appear in the places where I am most happy!
Like a lot of the country, Florida has also experienced some unusually cold weather (for them anyway) this winter. The wind on this particular day, a bit later in the morning, had become unrelenting. Although the temperature was warm enough (mid-70’s), the wind made it unpleasant for lounging on the beach. We retreated for the soothing water of the hot tub at the hotel instead.
As you can see in this photo I took later that afternoon, the wind was so strong it pretty much flattened the beach!
Clearly other folks had decided too that it was not a good beach day.
I’ve been busy reviewing and editing my photos today. I haven’t decided how many Florida posts there will be just yet. The wind did continue for the week, but luckily it wasn’t quite as strong as this day. I’ll end this post here, so as not to overwhelm with too many of the photos I am excited about sharing. My 100-400mm f8 lens performed nicely for me in the bright sunshine, so I’ll definitely have more to share this week.
A last minute decision to drive to Warwick, Rhode Island and see what we could see turned into, as I titled this post, an impromptu mini-adventure. The luck of the sunny weekends has stayed with us this summer. We drove to Conimicut Point Park and enjoyed some exploration. A short walk through a tunnel of green…
…led out to a beach that wasn’t terribly crowded despite a later start to our day compared to previous beach visits.
I walked to a sandbar that was beginning to get covered by water from both directions around this point.
Sparkly water at a salty beach…ah, one of my favorite things. At this park there is also a view of Conimicut Lighthouse.
I continued my exploration around the point and saw the shell of one of the largest horseshoe crabs I’ve ever encountered. My foot is in this photo for scale, and I have a relatively large foot – size 9 1/2 in US Women’s sizing.
My hobby of geocaching is something I try to indulge in places that I visit. The geocaching app told me there was a cache to be found only a half mile away from where we parked. It sent me down a dead-end dirt road, and what a beautiful dead end it was:
There was a guardrail at the end of the dirt road, as a geocacher who has been playing this game for a couple years now, I knew that the guardrail was a likely hiding spot to find a cache, and I was correct. A magnetic hide-a-key box was tucked behind the rail. I didn’t have a pen on me – part of the game is signing the log when you find the cache – so I snapped this picture of the log instead and said thank you to the cache owner for leading me to this pretty place.
Another smiley face for me!
After my exploring, I settled in to my beach chair and just enjoyed the sun and sights around me, breathing in that salt air that I love to fill my lungs with. I watched a cormorant successfully dive and catch 3 fish. A greedy gull tried to horn in on its catch, but the cormorant quickly swallowed the fish down. I love how cormorants stand to dry their wings after swimming.
Since this was a last minute trip, I had not planned a picnic or snacks for this visit. When hunger struck, we headed to a Rhode Island favorite stop of mine, Iggy’s Doughboys and Chowder House. They are known for their chowder and clam cakes, and that’s exactly what I had for my meal:
It was delicious, along with a shared pitcher of sangria.
I very happily enjoyed sitting on the deck with a wonderful ocean breeze with these treats.
Not quite ready to head back just yet when we finished, we meandered down route 1 and made stops at Point Judith Lighthouse and Gallilee, where you can take a ferry to Block Island. Weary of weekend highway driving, we continued following route 1 into Connecticut, then took “the long way home” up route 32 back into Massachusetts. Along route 32 in Willimantic, CT there is the neatest bridge I’ve ever seen. I wish I had a photo of it, but I don’t so I’ll put a link to Wikipedia you can check out for yourself: The Frog Bridge. Did you read the story about the Frog Bridge while you were there? Isn’t that wild? Every time I drive by it I say to myself that I’m going to go back and take pictures, but I never have.
My days of summer vacation are dwindling as I type this post. I have to be back in school two weeks from today for two teacher work days, then the students arrive the Wednesday before Labor Day. Hoping to have a few more impromptu adventures in the time that I have left!
In the spring of this year, New England had gotten into a horrible weather pattern. It rained every Saturday in a row from mid March for 14 weeks in a row! I believe the pattern of precipitation went even farther back if you include winter sleet and snow. Fortunately, we have broken out of that pattern for summer. Some folks will complain that with the sunshine came the humidity. And it is true, we have had some brutal humidity, but I will take that any day over cold and wet. Sunshine and humidity makes for the perfect excuse to escape to the beach. I feel as though I’ve had a bit of a “tour” of New England beaches so far this summer. I did spend plenty of time at the ocean in Maine, which you can see in this post and this one, but that wasn’t a beachy type of trip. So far this summer, I have been to Hammonasset Beach State Park in Madison, CT, Rocky Neck State Park in East Lyme, CT, a lesser-known beach at the Cape Cod Canal Visitors’ Center in Sandwich, MA, and Sachuest Beach in Middletown, RI.
I’ve been to Hammonasset several times, but this particular day was just “alright” to me, as well as my visit to Rocky Neck. Both of these days started out a bit overcast, but eventually brightened. The weather wasn’t my issue. As early arrivals in the morning, I enjoyed a not-crowded morning walk and breathing in that salty air. State parks in Connecticut, however, are free to Connecticut residents. A wonderful thing for those residents, but not so great when things get crowded. At both of these places, as the day progressed, more and more inconsiderate people arrived: large groups playing loud music and having loud conversations. I guess this is to be expected on a weekend in summer, but I’ve never understood why people feel the need to overpower the natural sounds of gulls calling and waves crashing with loud music. If you need your music so badly, isn’t that what ear buds and headphones were invented for? I’ve had better times at both of these places – several midweek visits on my own to Hammonasset were more peaceful, but since not everyone I know is a teacher with summer days off from work, the weekend is when I can enjoy these places with companionship.
Sachuest Beach in Rhode Island also started out beautifully.
I had a peaceful walk on soft sand and warm water. There is a bird nesting sanctuary for piping plovers at the end of this beach and they were actively darting around taking care of their young and warning off predators. After my walk, I enjoyed breakfast of cider donuts I brought with me from Randall’s Farm in Ludlow, MA.
At $35 to park here on the weekend, I had hoped that maybe this beach might not get quite as crowded, but it did. However, folks here seemed a bit more respectful of nature. Yes there was music, but it was played more quietly, and there weren’t as many large groups with loud conversation.
The gem of the beach days for me was at the Cape Cod Canal Visitors Center. This is one of the few places I know of on the Cape where you can park for free. I don’t think I’ll be letting a big secret out into the internet with the readership of my blog! If you arrive early enough in the day -a necessity to get over the bridges to the Cape on a summer Saturday – you can park in the parking lot for the visitors center and walk a short path to small beach at the side of the canal.
The sand is typical of Cape Cod Bay and southern Maine beaches – a little more course, and lots of seaweed and rocks and shells. But this is what I have always known growing up in Massachusetts and vacationing in Maine or on Cape Cod, and it doesn’t bother me in the least. In fact, as I walked this beach that morning, I found myself missing the days of renting a cottage at the shore for a week’s vacation. Finding an affordable place to do that these days unfortunately seems prohibitive.
On my walk, I first ventured out along the breakwater, carefully picking my way along the not always flat and straight rocks.
Next I turned and walked the other direction down the beach. It was such a beautiful morning, I kept going for quite some time.
I eventually came to an inlet that I was not crossing on foot when I realized how far I had walked.
I realized where I was when I watched a paddle boarder glide out from the inlet into the bay.
(Don’t you love the gull photo-bombing this shot?)
A few years ago, I had risen very early in the morning after loading my kayak on to my car the night before. I drove myself to the Sandwich Boardwalk beach where a friend had told me there was a peaceful tidal marsh that was nice for kayaking. I got there so early, I arrived before the parking lot attendant who collects the money for parking. I left a note on my windshield saying that I was kayaking and would come pay the fee as soon as I got back. Here’s a shot from that morning in July of 2020:
On my return walk to our spot on the beach, I was surprised to see seals swimming in the bay! Seals on Cape Cod are not an unusual summer sighting, however, this was much further inland than where they are usually seen.
For a bit of reference, here’s a look at Google Maps.
This screenshot gives you a view of where I was and where I walked. The visitor center is marked in the upper left – that’s where we parked. You see the walk along the canal out to the beach, and the breakwater. I walked out to the inlet just before the spot marked Sandwich Harbor. The seals are commonly spotted out at the “forearm” of the Cape, or the outer Cape – Wellfleet, Truro and Provincetown:
I enjoyed a full day on this beach, also necessitated by getting back home over the bridges on the weekend. The traffic is horrific at certain times of day. Conveniently, in the same area where we parked there is a Seafood Sam’s restaurant. We enjoyed dinner there, and then one more walk near the canal searching for a few geocaches. We found two out of the three we searched for. The smiley faces were found, the blue frown was not:
As we walked back along the canal to the parking lot, I took one more shot with the sun beginning to set:
The second port of call for this cruise was Costa Maya on the mainland of Mexico. Upon looking out on the balcony as we arrived, I saw that the brand new, 250,000 ton Icon of the Seas was already in port. This ship had been greatly touted by Royal Caribbean prior to its maiden voyage in January of this year. The 90,000 ton Radiance that we were on looked like a baby ship in comparison.
Radiance left, Icon right.
It was quite the sight to see right along our ship in port. Even the crew members of Radiance were lined up on the deck to check out this monster of a ship.
Looking at Icon from breakfast
I was excited for the excursion planned for this port. I’d read about a private beach club owned by an American family called Maya Chan. This wasn’t a cruise line sponsored excursion so we had some extra directions to follow.
Puerto Costa Maya
We had to find our way through the maze of shops and restaurants, and they don’t make it easy! After about 15 minutes of walking through this beautifully designed port area, ( I’m sorry I didn’t take pictures, I was very focused on getting to meet the guides) we made it out and found the guides who put everyone traveling to Maya Chan on taxis. It was about a half hour ride down extremely bumpy, deeply pot holed roads, but it was definitely worth the trip.
Maya Chan beach
Upon arrival at Maya Chan, we were greeted by one of the family members who own the property who explained all the facilities including all inclusive buffet for lunch and beverages alcoholic or non. We were shown to our seating area which was ours alone for the day. They brought us tortilla chips with homemade salsa and guacamole and delicious rum punch to begin. That’s a great start in my book!
I took advantage of a half hour massage that was offered for only $25! Shortly after the massage, the staff came around to inform us lunch was served. It was soooooo good! The native Mexican homemade fare was off the hook – flour or corn tortillas with 4 choices of tender delicious meats: chicken, beef, pork or fish. All the fixings for toppings were available.
Strawberry margarita
After lunch I enjoyed some strawberry margaritas, delivered to me on the beach by the very gracious and attentive staff. Some time was also spent enjoying the floating chairs you can see in the background one photo up. The waiter even waded into the water to bring more drinks!
My day at Maya Chan was relaxing and the weather was beautiful. I 100% recommend this place if you ever find yourself in Costa Maya. Another bumpy taxi ride returned us to the port.
The next day was another day at sea, returning across the gulf to Tampa. I have a few more adventures to share from a few days in Florida, in a post to come.
For days 38, 39, and 40 of summer, my girls and I visited my mom on Cape Cod. We were hoping the weather forecast would improve, but it remained overcast with occasional showers until the day we needed to come home. But we made our own fun.
We started on Sunday with a lunch that definitely doesn’t fit into my fitness plans, lol:
That’s a split dog with bacon and cheese from the The Dog House in Dennisport.
I spotted some beautiful lilies across the street while we ate our lunch.
Visits to the Christmas Tree Shops are always a part of our trips to the Cape. Sarah has a tradition of finding the silliest hats she can while we are there and trying them on.
Of course we never miss a visit to the candy store either!
The Yarmouth Sand Sculptures were back again this year, although they did not seem as expansive as I’ve seen in the past.
We found a unique window box at the Hot Chocolate Sparrow in Orleans, where we stopped for afternoon treats.
An afternoon walk along a small boardwalk at Grey’s Beach in Yarmouth turned up a personalized board that I had to take a photo of – We
I hope Daphne does not take offense!
A little visitor stopped by at my mother’s house when we had returned from our day’s adventures.
In an attempt to enjoy a little warm, sunny beach time before we had to head home, we enjoyed a treat from Dunkin Donuts Tuesday morning.
I’m very appreciative of this time I got to spend with my family. Excellent treats, excellent times!
Summer days 8, 9, and 10 were spent on our annual group camping trip. If you are curious about this tradition of ours, you can read a couple different posts I’ve done about it using this link.
We returned to Shawme Crowell State Forest on Cape Cod for this year’s trip. We arrived on Friday afternoon with relatively few traffic hassles, which is always a nice bonus.
We set up our tent in the sunshine and enjoyed a beautiful, rain-free weekend.
A short exploration of one of many trails in the state park started our day on Saturday.
That was followed with lunch at a local seafood place and an afternoon at the beach by the canal.
My group of forever-friends posed for a shot by the canal (that’s me on the far right):
It was a beautiful, relaxing weekend spent with great people.
Our dogs even came home from the doggie-spa (kennel) fresh and clean!
Good things have been happening around here! The project that I began back on Labor Day weekend has finally come to its fruition. My dining room floor has been sanded and polyurethaned, and we purchased area rugs, as well as some new outlet covers and heat registers. My drapes have been dry-cleaned of their dingy-dustiness.
Dining room before:
Dining room after I ripped out the nasty old carpet:
I spent an entire afternoon sitting on sore buttocks ripping those carpeting tacks out, by the way!
Dining room after the floor guy came (if anyone local would like a recommendation, be sure to let me know! Fabulous job, reasonable price):
Some of the stains were just too deeply embedded in the floor to remove without replacing floor boards, but it is a huge improvement!
And not overly noticeable, I think, now that the room has been put back in shape:
Next project, kitchen floor. Hoping to have someone here for an estimate in the next week or so.
In the meantime, my sister, Sarah and I travelled to the Cape for a visit with my mom. (our first visit there without Meghan – she was unable to join us 😦 )
The last weekend of September was warm and pleasant. It allowed us sunny time visiting the beach…
…and one last chance for toes in the sand for 2013.
Sad to know that my beach days are done for this year, but at least I have October baseball to enjoy this year! My Red Sox are one win away from eliminating the Tampa Bay Rays from the ALDS.
Now if I could just figure out a way to watch them win it all from here:
😉
Contrary to how it may seem, I really have been thinking about Scott Thomas’s current photography assignment “Your Photography Passion”. Scott posted some interesting articles concerning the subject and mentioned that there are really two ways interpret this idea: what you are passionate about photographing or representing your passions with photography. Two really different ideas, that I think could also overlap. Hmmm, a challenge if I ever heard one.
I believe the first interpretation of the idea is the simpler one for me. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you have probably noticed that I love photographing the details of nature. Flowers are usually a very congenial photography subject, and I love taking their pictures, and if at all possible, taking the pictures to a different level either literally or figuratively. Let me try to show you what I mean with some of my favorite photos from the past.
More recently, I’ve become more passionate about improving my bird photography. Last year, I started attempting to keep a “life list” of the birds I’ve seen, and I’m always trying to identify the birds I may not know or get a picture of one I’ve never photographed before. I’ve been especially passionate about getting pictures of the tiniest and largest birds in my area: hummingbirds and hawks.
And I sure spend a lot of time taking bird photos on vacation too:
But what if “passion” is defined as those things that we choose to find or make the time in our lives for? Of course I am passionate about my family, but I believe that is natural and not necessarily definable as a “passion” in this instance. So what else do I make the time for in my life because it is important to me?
In this sense of the word, I think dance would qualify.
I make the time for those few hours a week of exercise and socialization and learning and fun.
My garden would qualify too, I think, since it certainly isn’t a necessity in today’s world and why the heck would we gardeners go to all this trouble if we weren’t passionate about it?
I am perhaps most passionate about one of the more elusive facets of my life:
The beach and the ocean are the place where I find myself most at peace. Breathing the air and feeling the sand and the salt and the sun bring me to a special place within myself, in all likelihood, the closest I will ever find myself to a zen-like place if I am using that term correctly.
Thank you, Scott, for a very thought-provoking photo assignment!
On our visit to Cape Cod last week, we were lucky to witness the professional sand sculpting going on during the town of Yarmouth’s Summer Celebration Kick-Off. There were three professional sculptors working over a few days in a roped-off area of Bass River or Smugglers Beach.
One creation was a breaching whale:
Another was slightly open to interpretation. My daughters and I thought this one showed perhaps a Chinese Junk:
The reverse of this one did not offer more definition:
We puzzled over whether this was a stone wall with cracks or maybe storm clouds with lightning; either choice seems to threaten the small sail boats below. This sculptor went on to add a mermaid at the base:
Perhaps this sculptor wanted to leave some thoughts to the imagination? Or maybe there is a myth or story that is being portrayed here.
By far the most impressive of the three was the London Tower Bridge, bedecked for the Summer Olympics:
The reverse side of the bridge harkens back to the town bringing us the fun sculptures to enjoy:
While these three sculptures were created by professional sand sculptors (can you believe there is such a job? Must be nice!), it appeared that other folks with some sand talent were invited to get in on the fun. I didn’t see these being worked on, and they didn’t have the staying power of the professional works, but these adorable smaller sculptures were also on display:
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