Oh yes — I could retire to the beach

My family members are retiring all around me! I’m there mentally, believe me. I would retire tomorrow, if not sooner. But I’m not there financially.

Meanwhile, my husband and I are checking out places where we would like to spend more time when the time comes — and they all have one thing in common. The beach!

In this post I’ll share some beach and sunset photos from one of our recent trips — to Sarasota Florida. We stayed with relatives that rent a beach house for a full month every winter. (You can see pictures of the cute beach house decor here.)

That first picture is a little art photo I captured. There were shells everywhere. It was a collector’s dream!

Every evening we would walk to the beach for sunset. It was a pleasant five-minute walk. Depending on the weather we would bring towels to sit on or blankets to wrap up in.

On this particular evening, the weather was pleasant.

I love that anticipation when walking to the ocean, and just before you crest the inevitable hill or dune before arriving, you actually don’t quite know what you will experience. Will the wind be blowing? Will the waves be calm or crashing?

It turned out that it was fairly calm. We were comfortable in light shirts. We took our places on the sand to watch the sun lowering toward the sea.

Although of course it is an illusion that the sun is “setting.” We use this language even though everyone except the flat earth people understands that it is the earth rotating away from the sun that creates the visual trick of the sun dropping into the ocean.

Tides, similarly, are a trick, my husband shared with us that night. Evidently they are not just due to the pull of the moon but to the earth’s rotation. If you think about, it does make sense!

It was a gorgeous evening. There were pelicans flying low across the water, and we saw some dolphins too. I managed to capture a picture of one out by the buoy.

It was so wonderful. Our feet in the sand. The rhythmic sound of the waves. The golden glow of the late day sun. Magical.

And there was more than the sunset and the wildlife to see. At one point, a fishing boat trolled by.

Evidently this gentleman walks the beach each night at sunset with a cocktail in hand.

The sky turned a lovely color of orange that night as the sun was setting. It really makes a difference in the sunset colors to have some light clouds or haze!

If you spot a helicopter in that last picture, it’s not your imagination. We watched as a helicopter flew out to a boat, lowered slowly down. And then hovered above the boat for quite a long time. Rescue mission? Military training? Special delivery? We didn’t have binoculars, so we we will never know.

Thank you for reading and coming along on a little trip to the beach!