The new piles of sand at Boat Meadow Beach are ready for Hurricane Lee as the storm approaches Cape Cod. There is usually so much erosion from the rain and high tides on the bay side beaches that they bring in extra sand before the storm.
I took a ride to Nauset Beach yesterday afternoon and was so surprised to see the parking lot almost full and plenty of people sitting on the beach enjoying the gorgeous weather. (Click on blog link for other photo.)
It was very hot and humid at my house and easily 15 degrees cooler at the beach. Clearly, they had all made the right choice! It was the perfect way to spend a hot, summer afternoon with the ocean breezes cooling everyone off!
The pretty pink Swamp Rose-Mallow wildflowers are blooming along the beaches and salt marshes. I took this photograph from the bridge on the Silver Spring Loop Trail at the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. (Click on blog link for other photo.)
The Swamp Rose-Mallow wildflowers are a large, showy flower that are usually pink, but sometimes white. The plant is fairly large with flowers that are 4-7″ while the plant grows to 7 feet tall.
Have you ever seen a Swamp Rose-Mallow wildflower? So Pretty!
Our neighbor has several Diamondback Terrapin nests in her yard so it has been fun watching and waiting for them to hatch. Yesterday one of the terrapin nests was quite active with 11 little hatchlings emerging. They were just precious! (Click on blog link for other photos.)
You can see where the little turtles as they scurry about where their nest was. Our local “turtle expert,” Bill Allan had put a cage over it while they incubated so that any predator could not get to them.
He put the terrapins in a little plastic box and gave them some water as we went over to release them by the salt marsh. I didn’t know that these terrapin will spend 4 years outside of the water, just in the woods or undergrowth, as they grow. How fascinating!
The weather has been so hot and humid lately that people are flocking to the beach in the evenings when it is a bit cooler and there’s a little breeze. Saturday evening I took a walk to Boat Meadow Beach and and it looked like a summer’s day as a sunfish and 2 stand-up paddle-boarders headed out on the cooler waters.
What a gorgeous view… and look at that sky! Wow! It doesn’t get much prettier!
Cape Cod daily articles on the wonderful Cape Cod places to hike, experience and photograph. A Cape Cod Outdoor Adventure Series.