This past weekend, Melissa and I went to the Atlantic coast to spend a couple of days at Ormond Beach, at a popular locally-owned hotel we'd gone to several times in the past three decades...there were a lot of old memories stored in that place. We spent much of the time out at the pool and I read a lot and watched the beach, which was particularly crowded on this very hot and eventually very sunny weekend in July. When we drove down there, the weather was very stormy. It didn't let up until early evening, and on Sunday and Monday while we were there, the area was clear of storms...apparently resuming once we had left the area. We ate dinner Saturday afternoon at the Charley Horse restaurant just down the road on A1A, but for the rest of the stay we ate food we bought at the nearby Publix or had carried with us. Breakfast was provided "free" at the hotel (it never is really free), albeit a very modest one...nothing like the kind we were used to at the Hampton. Still, we enjoyed our stay there. Sunday evening, as we sat there by the pool looking eastward at the ocean, the area darkened due to the ban on beach lighting on account of the sea turtles. The stars gradually began to appear in the sky, starting with the brighter ones like Vega, Altair, Deneb, and Arcturus. Still, you had to know where to look to see them at this point in order to make them out of the dark blue background. As the darkness of the night increased, more stars appeared, and I looked over my shoulder southward to see the constellation of Scorpius, with the planet Saturn positioned just to its west...
Over the last few days, I've been seeing all kinds of news stories on TV about shark attacks on bathers off the coast, as well as the stranding of one on a North Carolina beach. At Ormond, we saw what we thought were shark fins many times breaking the water's surface, and they were often very close to the shore where there were people out in the water. While walking along the beach, we also saw a multitude of small jellyfish lying in the sand. I don't think I would have enjoyed going out in the water under these circumstances...
