Monday Pics: A Thursday Tradition

Incoming, a wave about to crest over the camera

Black and white waves crashing on a beach

Low waves coming into shower with towering clouds overhead

Went down to Florida for a sorority sister’s wedding. She had it on the beach in Santa Rosa Beach, which was absolutely lovely. The area is called the Emerald Coast for the green color of the water and you can see it in these pictures (well, not in the black and white one). I’ve never been much of an ocean person, preferring Lake Michigan, but these was a really fantastic beach. The way the waves were coming in reminded me a lot of the lake and it didn’t have the awful algae problems the Great Lakes have now. Also, there were shoals of tiny fish and swimming crabs. The wedding was lovely but the beach was better. I think we may have to start visiting more often.

Where should we go?

Taking suggestions for destinations for the holidays. Bonus points for cool cultural stuff and affordable flights. I’m entertaining everything from Europe to the tropics so cold or warm both work. I can’t make up my mind about what sounds best and if I don’t think about this now, I tend to dither until its too late.

Path to the Sky

Path to the Sky print
Path to the Sky at The Octopus Gallery

I recently got married and my husband and I took our honeymoon in Nova Scotia. We had been there about four years ago and really were excited about going back. On place that we definitely needed to revisit was the Kejimkujik National Park of Canada Seaside Adjunct. It’s a beautiful, but little known park in Nova Scotia.

The coastal elements of the natural region are represented by the 22 square kilometre Kejimkujik Seaside Adjunct, added to the park in 1988. Located about 25 kilometres southwest of Liverpool and 100 kilometres from the inland portion of the park, it is one of the least disturbed shoreline areas on the south coast of Nova Scotia. The Port Mouton peninsula features extensive brackish ponds and broad tidal flats, two spectacular white sandy beaches, salt lagoons, secluded coves and a nutrient productive salt marsh. Dense scrub alder and sheep laurel dominate the coastal tundra-like vegetation. The inland terrain is rugged – a wilderness of century-old spruce and fir, granite boulders and exposed bedrock carved by glaciation. On the barren uplands, boardwalks have been built over the marshy areas. The endangered piping plover, which nests on the beaches between late April and early August, is one of the many protected species that make up the wealth of birdlife. Waterfowl can be sighted in the lagoons, seaducks just offshore, and shorebirds on the tidal flats.

Great Canadian Parks / Nova Scotia

This picture is one of the boardwalks through the barrens on the trail that leads around the peninsula shore. Lots of gorgeous purple pitcher plants along the way and there are supposed to be tones of orchids that bloom in the summer.