January 20th, 2020

Yesterday was a spectacularly gorgeous day outside so naturally Tim and I wanted to spend as much time out in it as possible.  And me being me, of course I brought along my camera.

Initially it started out with me asking Tim if he had any thoughts of how he wanted to spend the day.  He responded that he had no particular thoughts in mind and was there something that I wanted to do.  I told him that I had nothing special in mind, but I thought I might grab my camera and head to the beach.  He was welcome to come along if he liked (of course!)  So off we went.

Instead of going to one of our usual beach access points we decided to go to the southest part of the island, Caspersen Beach.  We don't usually go there for a couple of reasons.  First, there are beach access points much closer to our house, the closest being less than a mile away.  It's all the same beach, why would I walk so much farther to get to what is effectively the same place?  Secondly, this is tourist/snowbird season which means people. Lots and lots of people.  Mostly they are all very nice and I completely understand why they want to be here. After all, we want to be here too.  But I generally avoid crowds.

But yesterday I felt kind of why the heck about it and we braved the crowds.  My thought being that if it felt like just too many people for me to deal with it, we could always leave and go elsewhere.  

We drove down. Kind of silly I know, it's only 3.4 miles away.  (I checked) but that is what we did. Don't get judgey.

As we neared and I saw the line of cars all heading to the same place I began to doubt the wisdom of this decision.  As we passed the first parking lot, which was nearly full to capacity, I was almost ready to just say," let's turn around and go somewhere else".  But when we turned into the 2nd parking lot , we found ourselves parked next to this and I suddenly, I knew it was all going to be just fine.

Why there was a pickup truck with both a life sized giraffe and a sea turtle figure in it is beyond my imagining, but there it was.  My sense of the absurd was tickled for sure.

We headed for the boardwalk first.  Easy walking, nice and flat, not too crowded with people and in fact, there were moments when we were the only people on the boardwalk. Nice! 

The beach, however, was pretty packed.  People people everywhere.  Some frolicking in the water, others looking for shells.  There were people fishing, playing frisbee, building sand castles or just walking.  Not a lot of people were swimming, oddly enough, but that's okay too.

The water was particularly pretty with blues, greys and greens and only small waves so only little splashes.  The temperature of the water was nearly identical to the air so just about perfect.

But, I was ready to go.  I had a few photos, I was ready to move on to greener pastures. Or bluer water or at least different scenery.  So we started to leave but our way back to the car, we noticed what seemed to be a path.  "Any idea what's down that way?"  "Nope"  "Let's find out" .  Decision made, we trekked on down the path which seemed to go on forever!

The intercoastal was on one side, but the views of it were peek-a-boo with only occasional sightings through the foliage.  Obviously the ocean was on the other side and here and there were paths to reach it through the undergrowth.  

We saw boats, and fisher people and far less crowded beach areas.  There were interesting rocks and shells and some strikingly lovely and unexpected flowers.  We walked for nearly an hour and didn't see anything that looked remotely like the end.  I will definitely need to return another day to go farther!    Here is some of what we saw:

Because it never crossed our minds that we might be hiking, I wasn't wearing proper footwear and my sandals, while very comfortable in most circumstances, were not ideal for trekking along a very sandy trail for miles.  Mental note;  Next time wear sneakers.

We went home via the jetty, one of our favourite beach access points.  It was fairly busy with other folks who also love it there and we didn't stay for a hugely long time, but long enough to smell that lovely oceany, briney, salty fragrance, watch some net fishermen cast and haul their nets, admire some pelicans, smile at dolphin antics, climb around on the rocks and feel that wet breeze refresh us.

And then we just went home and relaxed for the rest of the day. 

​A perfectly lovely way to spend a Sunday!  Don't you wish you had been there with us?