Frozen Ocean and Snow Dunes: Not Your Average Day At The Beach

Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.  I've been visiting this small seaside resort at least once a year since before I was born.  I've seen the surf churned up by passing hurricanes, fled the fury of intense summer thunderstorms, and endured a creepy week of waiting for a dead body to wash ashore.  I've even seen a little snow, once or twice.  This past weekend, after an estimated 60-plus visits to this place, I saw something I had never witnessed before - and in all likelihood will not see again.

Let's start with the dunes.

Dune - mostly snow - looking north.

Detail, dune snow - looking south.

Okay - I've seen this, before.  Snow on the sand.  A little unusual for Delaware, but no big deal.  I would not have bothered to come down off of the boardwalk in my totally inappropriate shoes for snow.  

Here's what intrigued me...

Frozen Ocean.

That's ice.  A lot of it. In the Atlantic ocean. The MID-Atlantic ocean. Sorry shoes - must get a closer look at this...

High-ice-- I mean, tide.

Shaken, not stirred.  Okay, stirred.

Polar bear, or just polar bear-size chunk of ice?

Now I know how sea glass is made.

The next day, sleet and freezing rain had me shooting from my room above the boardwalk.  The ice had thickened...

The cold never bothered me anyway.  Wait - yes it does!

No swimming near jetty.

Mmm... drippy!

As amazing as it was to see the ocean full of ice, nearly motionless, and eerily quiet, it was still nice to see this - on the third day - just as I was about to start singing Moby's "When It's Cold I'd Like To Die..."

Sunreturn.  Order is restored.

It felt good to get the camera out for a little exercise.  Maybe I'll do it again, soon...

Thaw: Snow is pretty, but stoppit.

So, we've had worse winters here in the DC area (I'm looking at you, 2010), but few that dragged on quite as long as this one has.  This is surely true across at least two-thirds of the U.S., this year.  Today is St. Patrick's Day.  Baseball starts in two weeks.  SPRING officially begins in about three days!  And Winter had the audacity, the sheer rudeness, to dump nine or ten inches of SNOW on us, this morning.  It's not okay!

So.

Here are a few photos from warmer times and climes, a balm against the icy Thing That Wouldn't Leave...

Rehoboth Beach, DE - 1997

Rehoboth Again - 2001

Pensacola, FL - 2011

One More Rehoboth - 2001

Kill Devil Hills, NC - 2010

Lancaster, VA - 2010

Key West, FL - 1991

Islamorada, FL - 2000

Ft. Jefferson - Dry Tortugas, FL - 2000 - Photo by [Maris]

Gonna Need a Bigger Boat - Barbados - 1993

Sapphire Bay, St. Thomas, USVI - 1995

There.  All better.  Thanks for stopping by.  I hope to have some new material for this happy little place, like, soon...

Some Odds and The End of Gulfapalooza 2011

 All good things must come to an end, and here's the last of our Gulfapalooza 2011 lighthouse-hunting trip.  The odds and ends and um, The End.  Above, a mushroom cloud (oh, if ONLY) rises above Houston and a southbound intermodal train.

 I don't know.  Palms and sky.  Pretty.

 Swampy grass near Lake Pontchartrain.  Sawgrass?  Sugar cane?  Whatever - it's neat!

 Tourist trap!  Tourist trap at Port Isabel!  Hide your wallet!

 This is what Texas looks like.  Okay, that's not fair.  This is what Texas looks like when it's about to rain.

The Orion nebula is the birthplace of stars and worlds.  This part of Texas gives birth to oil rigs.

 Train!  Well, a semi-restored museum piece, but still.  A nice example of an old SW1 switcher.

 ...and an even better caboose.

 Pensacola Light Station's only pelican.  He's very disciplined, though - stood still until completely painted!

We finished shooting lighthouses with a couple of days to spare, but we were nowhere near ready to go home, so we made haste to Kill Devil Hills, and our favorite beach-side balcony.  Best.  Trip.  Ever.

Thanks for visiting.  With any luck, we'll have more pictures to post soon.

Right On The St. Marks - Gulfapalooza 2011 Winding Down

 We have reached the final lighthouse of Gulfapalooza 2011.  This is the St. Marks light, on the Gulf of Mexico about 26 miles south of Tallahassee, Florida.  It lives in the wild and spectacular St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, on a warm and windy peninsula.  The shot above is what happens when one tries to photograph a tall lighthouse from too close.  If I had backed up any farther, I would have been in the Gulf.

 This shot required some trudging around the swampy edge of a potentially gator-infested pond, but it was worth it.  And [Maris] kept an eye out for wildlife.

 Ah, the US Coast Guard.  Not sure what all that gear is listening to - or for - but they sure know how to make a mess of a cupola.

 That's a little better.

 So, I'm in the swamp, shooting the lighthouse.  I turn around, and look who's been coolly watching me from about 25 yards away!  It's (I think) a great snowy egret!

 Another salty pond, another bird.  Not sure what this too-big-to-be-a-sandpiper thing is.  Anyone?

 The skyline of the downtown St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge...

 I like that there is a variety of tropical foliage, but it hasn't been planted in neat rows and groomed and carefully tended.  It's wild.

 And just ever so slightly primordial.   Or something.

 Another bird.  Judging by the various songs and calls, I was tempted to say it was a mockingbird, but I really don't know.  I do know that it and its buddies dropped a lot of those berries on the hood of my poor car, while [Maris] and I talked ourselves out of heading home, and instead made a reservation in Kill Devil Hills, NC.  We just weren't ready to end this vacation.

We still aren't.  

Hope you enjoyed this one.  I have a few odds and ends from this trip, and then . . . nothing.  I'll have to take more pictures.

McKayla Maroney Is Not Impressed With My Photo Blog

 Not impressed with hanging off the American Shoals lighthouse.

 Not impressed by Cape Lookout lighthouse.

 Not impressed by Camaro convertibles.

 Not impressed with Fort Jefferson OR its lighthouse OR its cannons.

 SO not impressed with Texas.

 Another lighthouse.  Not impressed.

Mile Zero in Key West.  Not impressed.

 McKayla is not impressed by big, billowy clouds with faces in them.

 Not impressed by trains.

 

Joe and [Maris] got married.  Not impressed.

And one bonus shot (not at all mine)...

McKayla Maroney is not impressed by Mars.

Thanks for playing along.  And before anyone gets all toe-y on us, we LOVE McKayla Maroney.  We hope she's deeply proud of her gold and silver medals from London, and we hope to see her in Rio.