It's Only Natural

Doug and I spent so many hours working on our beach cottage over the past year that when it was finished, all we wanted to do was admire our handiwork and relax.

So we did that.  For a couple of weekends, we spent most of our time sitting on the porch reading and hanging out with our pets.

But last weekend, we kind of woke up and realized that there was a whole marshy world to enjoy outside our cottage and we got moving.

The village below ours is Bowers Beach, and you can see the houses at the north end of Bowers from the southern end of Kitts Hummock. One day I mentioned to a neighbor that I wanted to walk there some day.  She told me that it was about 3 miles away, but that you can't actually get all the way to Bowers because the St. Jones River cuts through the beach there.

I wanted to see it for myself, so last Sunday morning, with the tide out, I decided to make the trek.  It was a great workout--6 miles on the beach is a lot tougher than 6 miles on pavement, but it's also a lot prettier. This is the view I had when I got close to where the river comes in:

The beach then curves around into where the river runs through Delaware's beautiful wetlands:

It was still kind of dark when I got there, but the sky brightened as I headed back toward Kitts Hummock:

After breakfast, Doug and I decided to venture over to the Ted Harvey Preserve, which is just west of our beach.  Doug had been there before, and he said we could probably walk out to the beach near the St. Jones on a dirt path through the preserve.  He was decked out for photography and wetland walking:

Unfortunately, I wasn't, and we discovered that the path was under water at this point because the tide was in, so that hike will have to wait for another day.  We have become very cognizant of the tides now that we're weekend warriors at the Bay.

But even with our plan foiled, we still had a wonderful day and got some great pictures....

of water, grasses, puffy white clouds, and blue skies:

of wildflowers:

butterflies:

and scrubby bushes with beautiful white blossoms:

Maybe next time we go down for the weekend, we can catch a low tide and make our way through the preserve on a new adventure.