Cape Cod Heights

Today, I'll wrap up a final post about our recent visit to Cape Cod.  On our last day there, we took another drive up to the National Seashore, where we explored one of the nature trails out into a salt marsh.  Afterwards, we drove up to the Nauset Light and then took a walk around the Marconi area - these dune photos are from that part of the adventure.

We also went back into the cypress swamp there - we'd been out into the swamp last September and thought it would be interesting to have another look.  The place was absolutely swarming with mosquitos though - it wasn't any kind of pleasant nature walk!  I hardly remember it, in fact!

Now, that's a marked contrast to the little walk we took around the salt marsh at the visitor center earlier that day.  The two photos with water views come from that part of the day's activities.  This area had a couple of interesting features - after walking through the marsh you gradually climb into a recovering forest, but all around a remnants of earlier development, including a golf course, and an old dike that was used to capture and filture the salt water.

There is some kind of natural effect here that works to make just about any water found inland on the cape fresh.  That's research for another day.

As we walked around those dunes, I found myself remembering some times when I was very young, and we lived in Florida, which was still developing at the time - before Disney World.  In fact, the Space Age was still just getting started...probably the Gemini program era.  Mid '60's.

We lived in a little town near Orlando and would drive to Daytona Beach or New Smyrna Beach on the weekends.  Development on the dunes there was still pretty sparse back there, and scenes like the ones above could still be found, except the Florida sand is always sparkling white in my recollection.  I remember an adventure around the top of a dune where we found a gentle sloping path back down the beach, and my buddy and I slid down it on our rear ends. 

You'd be lucky to find a patch like that anywhere on the Florida beaches today.  Thank goodness for the foresight it took to set aside and preserve the Cape Cod National Seashore!