Cape Cod 2014

Brian and I are back from our annual trip to visit his father on Cape Cod.  We had a perfectly wonderful time -- we both totally relaxed and enjoyed the scenery, the company and the entire experience!

I took all of the usual pictures -- beaches and water and sandy cliffs plunging into the sea, full of the blues, greens and golds of typical Cape Cod scenery, but I post those every year.  And looking back at last year's post vacation post, I realized that many of my new pictures are eerily similar to the old ones.  Time apparently marches slowly on Cape Cod.  So I've decided to post a few different shots, after this one ubiquitis salt marsh picture:

I am endlessly fascinated by the salt marsh.  This picture was taken at the edge of First Encounter beach, on the bay side of Eastham, looking South over the marsh.  A thunderstorm was rolling in.

Pop's yard is mostly beautiful, rich, soft, vibrant green moss.  Punctuated by some really interesting mushrooms.  This is not an uncommon species, very ordinary, but I loved the "fringe":

 On Labor Day, we persuaded Pop to cook out:

We spent an entire day on First Encounter beach.  It's the closest beach to our house, and the bay water is usually much warmer than the water on the Atlantic side.  These next couple of pictures were taken about 4 pm, when the tide was out.  I spent an hour walking around the beach photographing ripples.  Both dry ripples:

 And ripples frosted with seawater:

We were at First Encounter for the annual Windmill Weekend Sand Sculpting contest.  The viewer's choice award was given to "Shark Attack!":

This was a very timely entry.  Earlier in the week, two girls kayaking in Cape Cod Bay were attacked by a 12 foot great white shark.  He (or she) apparently came up from below the girls and grabbed the kayak, thinking it was a seal.  They never saw him coming, but when interviewed they claimed he plunged about 4 feet out of the water.  This next shot shows the bitten kayak.

The girls were unharmed, though very shaken.  The shark didn't care for his mouthful of fiberglass and swam off.  It is pretty unusual to see sharks in the bay, although they are sighted fairly often on the Atlantic side.  But seals have started to hang out on the bay side, so sharks have followed them.

Another big winner was "Winds of Spare Change.":

Dot, Pop and Brian were waiting for the winner's announcement:

The sun was sinking lower on the horizon, the tide was out, the clouds were building up, and I loved the glint of the sun on the pools of water left on the beach:

A great vacation!  Now back to work!