The Daily Blog

I got an email from WordPress the other day. November is blogging month. I forget the actual acronym but the point of the excercise is to post something on your blog every day. Yikes!

Maybe if I didn’t work full-time I could pull that off but somehow I think my entries would become a bit mundane…8:am alarm went off   9am coffee and toast…etc.

They say if you don’t have anything to say post pictures. Ok so here’s a picture. It has nothing to do with anything…I just like the Peanuts Family. 🙂

They suggest you post your stories of going “over the river and through the woods ” for the holidays. That won’t work for me because I work most holidays. Let  people with young children have the day off. Those kids won’t be little forever.

So the bottom line is this time of year is hard to find good stuff to post, especially when my theme is “travel related” for the everyday person. So like most everyday people I don’t travel 365 days a year. I get my 2 vacations and some little mini vacations but by this time of year I’m ready for a rest.

This year in addition to working between 40 & 50 hours / week I’m trying, in my spare time, to get the holiday card line together.  I’m trying to be sure my local supporters get their  photo shoot for their family portraits to go on their 2012 Christmas cards.

It’s not leaving much time for writing so I don’t think I’ll be able to meet the “post -a-day” challenge from WordPress. I’m sure you’d rather have quality over quantity.

Are any of you bloggers that follow me trying to meet that challenge? Let me know. I’d love to know what you think of that goal and if you are able to meet it. Maybe it will help me on those days when I just don’t have anything of substance to share.

In Search of Angry Seas

Ok I was a good girl. I did not go out in the hurricane looking for storm photos. I stayed home. I was bored. But every time I’d think about venturing out I’d hear another horror story about tree limbs hitting cars or even whole trees falling… but one day is about my limit.

Hurricane Sandy: Tree crushes car

I was thrilled when I got up this morning and saw the sun trying to peak through. By 9 am it was shining brightly. There was a breeze but no major wind gusts. There was no reason for me to stay in today.

I had lots of places I could check out..The cape, Falmouth, Scituate, Jamestown and Newport RI??? No way would I get to all of them they were too spread out.

Scituate was on the news. Photos there looked pretty tame now so I headed south to Mattapoisett. Neds Point Light is pretty easy to get to and I figured it would give me an idea of what the ocean was like today. Getting there turned out to be the challenge. The Neds Point Rd. was closed with a huge tree down but one of the residents gave me directions to get around it. Those took me through a residential area with a lot of pine trees. It was easy to tell when you would see down branches because you’d smell that wonderful pine sent before you even saw  them.

Once I got to the lighthouse in its little park I couldn’t believe it. It was like nothing had happened.

The sky was blue, there was no damage and the seas were calm.

I enjoyed the ambiance for a bit then decided to head to RI, specifically Beavertail Sate Park. That place can kick up a surf without any storm. I was sure I’d find some big waves there.

To get there I had to go over the Claiborne -Pell Bridge. It’s a beautiful bridge. It’s huge!

When I got to the toll booth I asked if it had stayed open during the hurricane. The collector told me he was only going to tell me once…they need SUSTAINED winds of 69 miles per hour. He said they only had sustained winds of 45 MPH during hurricane Sandy.

I mentioned that I’d seen quite a few boats moored in the harbor as I came over the bridge, did they ride out the storm out there? He said yes, not the smartest thing to do.

Then my time was up. Another car was behind me. I wished my toll collector a good day and continues on my way.

Along the shore you could see the debris left by the storm so it was easy to judge how far up the waves had come but the road was clear and  before I knew it I was tuning down the road to Beavertail State Park. That’s when I saw the blue lights.  Oh oh road block. I made a left and parked, grabbed the camera and headed down the hill to the corner. A women coming up the hill said I was a day late..I should have seen it yesterday. As I suspected the road had been completely under water. (This is what it normally looks like)

Today they were cleaning it up and had the road closed so the workmen could complete the chore.

On a side note I was told that IF I was able to get across to the other side I would see a car floating in the bay. A woman had run 2 police barricades because she didn’t want to be trapped on the “wrong side” of the bay. When she got to the low-lying section the water was too high and carried her car into the bay. Here the story changes depending on who is telling it. Some says she swam to shore and was rescued by the police others say she got out before her car went in the drink. Either way what she did after that was walk to the nearest bar and get drunk. Most of the folks I spoke with said they hoped her insurance turned her down. They were pretty irritated by her irresponsibility.

I hung around for a bit but by 1:30 it was pretty clear it would be several more hours before they opened the road so I headed back across the bridge to Newport, RI.

Hurricane Sandy

Well here I am stuck inside. Fingers crossed the power will stay on. Hurricane Sandy is pounding the East Coast with high winds, storm surge and extremely high tides helped along by the full moon.

AT SEA - OCTOBER 28: In this handout GOES satellite image provided by NASA, Hurricane Sandy, pictured at 16:00 UTC, churns off the East Coast as it moves north on October 28, 2012 in the Atlantic Ocean. Sandy, which has already claimed over 50 lives in the Caribbean is predicted to bring heavy winds and floodwaters to the mid-Atlantic region. (Photo by NASA via Getty Images)

The power went out for about 3 hours but there hasn’t been too much hard rain …at least not where I am anyway.

I don’t live right on the ocean and I’m not on the first floor. We have a lot of rivers that crisscross  our town, some are tidal rivers and we do get flooding from those sometimes but it never reaches my area of town.

(Waves roll in at Winthrop Ma)

Photo by: David Brazier, Winthrop, MA.

I have the sliders to my deck open and can hear the wind blowing and gusting but it’s very warm. If it weren’t for the drizzle you wouldn’t even need a sweater.

They say Hurricane Sandy is the biggest storm to hit the Northeast since a hurricane in the 1800’s. New York City is flooding even now and there is expected to be major  shore erosion on Cape Cod.

I wanted to go down to Beavertail State Park in Rhode Island to see if I could get some “angry sea” photos. I changed my mind when I saw pictures on the news of the waves on Narragansett Bay.

wpri-couple-watches-ocean-hurricane-sandy_20121029125057_JPG

There’s a section of the road to Beavertail that is very low with Narraganestt Bay on the left and the tidal flats on the right. I’m sure that’s underwater right now.

Photo By Steven SenneA woman reacts to waves crashing over a seawall in Narragansett, R.I., Monday, Oct. 29, 2012.  Hurricane Sandy continued on its path Monday, as the storm forced the shutdown of mass transit, schools a

But here in my little corner of the world it hasn’t been as intense as Hurricane Irene which dumped torrential rains along with the winds. My neighborhood had huge trees come down during Irene. I watched them from my deck but there’s been nothing here this time. Not to say there aren’t trees and limbs down other places…just none near me.

(Taunton MA)

Danforth Area

We still have a number of hours to go and the longer the wind blows the weaker the trees will get so we may still lose a few.  Tomorrow I will venture out to see what I missed by staying inside today.