Wednesday at HHI

On Wednesday I woke up unexpectedly early, so I thought I might as well look for the sunrise. 

And then, since I was up so early, I persuaded Jason to tag along with Grandma and Grandpa on their daily bike ride to the Harbour Town Bakery for coffee and breakfast.

And then we might as well stay for a romantic stroll around the harbor where I fell in love twenty-three years ago.

It’s astonishingly different at 9am than when we’re usually there in the evening and you’d have to kill to get a rocking chair.

We came back to Jeddy manhandling little cousins

and eventually made it to the beach.

a man who knows how to relax

Caleb, blissfully unaware of what lurks beneath

Alas, our pancake friends were back.

Skate in the foreground, whippy tail of a stingray above. The National Aquarium may call them elasmobranchs, but I think water pancake is more descriptive. And a collection of them should be a stack.

Standing ankle deep in the surf, I was peering into the water, and when I saw one I gasped and backed away, only to turn around and see another one just behind me, at which point I jumped and spun so hard I threw out my back a little bit.

stingray’s-eye view

One day we actually saw a pair of gigantic stingrays body-surfing a wave with the very tippy tips of their fingers up, or whatever their side edge is called where fingers should be.

After dinner we returned for golden hour, and enjoyed this much less horrifying specimen of wildlife.