{"id":9762,"date":"2014-01-24T10:15:05","date_gmt":"2014-01-24T16:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/?p=9762"},"modified":"2014-01-24T10:15:05","modified_gmt":"2014-01-24T16:15:05","slug":"friday-morning-3-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/uncategorized\/friday-morning-3-2\/","title":{"rendered":"friday morning,"},"content":{"rendered":"

and the forecast is cold, cold, cold, yet again…it might heat up to 30 today, but we’re also supposed to have wind gusts of 40 mph.<\/p>\n

delightful!<\/p>\n

so, back to sunny and warmer gulf shores…<\/p>\n

monday night, i asked kevin to wake me up on tuesday morning. \u00a0after tuesday it was supposed to get colder, so i decided i wanted to see the sunrise on tuesday.<\/p>\n

i took this at 6:40 a.m. \u00a0which is a very early time for me, personally, as you may know.<\/p>\n

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as we sat there a couple of pelicans flew by, and because we were on the 17th floor, they swooped right past us. \u00a0nice.<\/p>\n

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it was pretty spectacular, and i really wish i could make myself get up early and see the sun rise all the time. \u00a0doubtful that that’ll ever happen.<\/p>\n

i wish you could see the full effect of this shot; if i had a fancy camera with a huge lens, you could. \u00a0this person walking on the beach cast the longest shadow down there, so early in the morning.<\/p>\n

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after spending some time trying to wake up sufficiently, kevin and i headed to the bon secour national wildlife refuge, which was maybe 20 minutes from the condo. \u00a0we drove past the condos and the many, many, many tourist shops, and out of town on a little road lined with trees. \u00a0it’s funny how quickly we went from smack dab in the middle of so much commercial yuckiness to the bucolic ruralness.<\/p>\n

there was maybe one other car in the parking lot when we got there. \u00a0there were a few different trails, and kevin and i set out on one of them. \u00a0there were lots of palm fronds everywhere and lots of pine trees. there were also lots of little signs explaining things, and we stopped to read most of them.<\/p>\n

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i love this tree that kevin is standing in front of, but i don’t know what it is. \u00a0it looked to me like that stuff hanging off it was part of the tree, but kevin thought it was some kind of invasive vine. \u00a0i guess we’ll never know, unless maybe jim happenes to read this and informs me about it.<\/p>\n

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we climbe a tower with a nice lookout, over what was called “gator lake,” but we saw no gators anywhere. \u00a0clearly they were hiding and lurking, but we didn’t look tasty to them, thank goodness.<\/p>\n

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me, down below.<\/p>\n

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i stopped a passing hiker and got them to take our picture. \u00a0i wanted documentation of us in our matching t-shirts. \u00a0i thought this was pretty funny. \u00a0we did see some old people in matching outfits, not there on the trail, but near the condo – one couple was wearing matching sweatshirts and hats. \u00a0so we were just blending in with the other old folks!<\/p>\n

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i sent the photo to bev, who wrote back, “what’s montelle?” \u00a0and of course i had no idea what she was talking about, but kevin reminded me that our t-shirts said “montelle” on them. \u00a0it was a winery we’d visited somewhere in missouri a while ago. \u00a0the winery was kind of nice, but the t-shirts were great.<\/p>\n

this path led all the way down to the beach on the gulf of mexico.<\/p>\n

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the sand seemed whiter here, and it was almost completely empty. \u00a0beautiful.<\/p>\n

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of cours i took millions more pictures of the funny little birds scurrying around.<\/p>\n

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what a nice day.<\/p>\n

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we hung out on the beach for a while, even sat down on a towel and had a snack of tuna and crackers. \u00a0the gulls lurked around so we threw them a cracker with tuna, and the gull was only interested in the cracker! the tuna was hickory smoked, so maybe that wasn’t a flavor the gull cared for. \u00a0here he is, eating the cracker.<\/p>\n

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we walked on the beach for a while and i started picking up shells, which made me want to pick up more and more. \u00a0there was a pretty good selection on this uncrowded beach; on the beach in front our our condo, people were constantly collecting the shells, so it was a little more challenging to find good ones.<\/p>\n

i could have stayed there for hours, but we finally walked back. \u00a0near the end of the trail we stopped and saw this stuff.<\/p>\n

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it had this accompanying sign, which we thought was interesting.<\/p>\n

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here’s a closeup of the deer moss.<\/p>\n

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do you see the tracks in the sand? \u00a0we think it was from a stroller. \u00a0this was definitely not the place for a stroller. \u00a0i’d read about the trail on trip advisor, and i remembered that some people complained bitterly about how difficult it was to walk on, and how hard it was to push a stroller. \u00a0so clearly this person hadn’t read the reviews.<\/p>\n

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here’s a picture that kevin took of the sunset on sunday night.<\/p>\n

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tuesday evening we went to yet another divey place and listened to more live music. \u00a0this was a two-man band, and they were very cheerful and drank a lot, and the aged, drunk and very cheerful crowd requested everything from dolly parton’s “9 to 5” to jim croce to jimmy buffet. \u00a0the guys cheerfully played it all, and the crowd sang along.<\/p>\n

two older women in particular stuck out; one was very tan, had an expensive haircut and blonde, streaked hair, had a nose job, and wore very sparkly clothes with lots of flashy jewelry. \u00a0she was there with a guy who didn’t seem as happy to be there, but the woman mostly talked to her friend, a thin woman, not so flashy, who kept WHISTLING at the songs. \u00a0she was able to whistle reallly loudly, one of those loud whistles that people do with their fingers to their lips, but she didn’t need her fingers. \u00a0i was fascinated, and would love to be able to do that.<\/p>\n

the whistling did get a little old after a while.<\/p>\n

we left at the band was taking a break and we stopped to talk to one of the band members. \u00a0the whistler was leaving, too, and the band guy told us that she was 84!<\/p>\n

so that’s very inspiring. \u00a0i hope i’m in a bar whistling at a band when i’m 84.<\/p>\n

there’s always something to aspire to.<\/p>\n

ok then,<\/p>\n

mrs. friday morning hughes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

and the forecast is cold, cold, cold, yet again…it might heat up to 30 today, but we’re also supposed to have wind gusts of 40 mph. delightful! so, back to sunny and warmer gulf shores… monday night, i asked kevin to wake me up on tuesday morning. \u00a0after tuesday it was supposed to get colder, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6JLYy-2xs","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}