Bill's Blog

The Florida Keys

Orlando

Gaylord et al at night

Yellow Love

The Caribbean... the Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Grand Turks, and at sea

Sea Flight 1

Sea Flight 2

A Pair of Island Lifeguards

Beached 1 (in front of a major resort)

Beached 2- no more tours

Front Yard

Historic library after a hurricane

On the elevator

Harbor escorts- note the machine guns at the bows

April- May, 2019

Storm clouds on the road

Storm moving over Miami

Urban Sunrise

July, 2019

Key West

The Bahamas

Public Service Message, on the side of a building

The Grand Turks

The store fell victim to a hurricane but is still open

Tallahassee, FL

A Rural Gated Community, with communal mailbox

Ocala, FL

May- June, 2019

On the bus...

May, 2019

Lensball, assisted by a shot-glass repurposed from what it is normally used for in Key West.

April 2, 2019

I275 South and I75 South Intersection

March 31, 2019

A bit of explanation:

The images above are from the FL DOC Road Prison on Big Pine Key. There used to be approximately 60 inmates housed who did basic road maintenance all up and down the Key's roads. The state decided several years ago that infrastructure repairs were too much to spend and closed the prison, contracting the roadwork out instead. The prison sits empty now.

 
The following are from the Big Blue Hole on Big Pine Key.
This now scenic stop is actually an abandoned rock quarry that was used for local roads and dug in the 30s and 40s.

If you search back through my posts, you can find images of the
One-eyed Alligator that lives in the Big Hole.




Big Pine Key in the Florida Keys
April 3, 2019

Jodi and the Lensball

March 27, 2019

Last batch of images-

Lighthouse foreshadowed

St. Augustine Doors

Renovation

The Tini Bar

Bird in Abstract

November, 2018

The pond in front out our home is visited by beautiful and graceful birds. They walk elegantly on long legs, brilliant white feathers glowing in the sun, occasionally dipping long beaks into the water for a snack. When done they spread beautiful wings and soar off to another spot.  

And then there is this guy...

December, 2018

St. Augustine, FL
November 28, 2018

The Santa Maria Restaurant opened in the '40's on St. Augustine's waterfront, next to the popular downtown. In 2015 it was sold and closed down. An ongoing battle between the new owners and the city left the once popular landmark desolate and abandoned. The hurricanes and storms have not been kind, causing more damage with each passing year. The big sign on the roof is gone and the walkway to the building is collapsing.

This is an ongoing series, now going back over four years. Visit my Out of Business gallery to see all the images.    

      November 27, 2018

Signs x 2

November 27-29, 2018

St. Augustine Seawall at Sunrise

November 28, 2018

From Wikopedia:

Tulum (Spanish pronunciation: [tuˈlum], Yucatec: Tulu'um) is the site of a pre-Columbian Mayan walled city which served as a major port for Coba, in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo.The ruins are situated on 12-meter (39 ft) tall cliffs along the east coast of the Yucatán Peninsula on the Caribbean Sea in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. Tulum was one of the last cities built and inhabited by the Maya; it was at its height between the 13th and 15th centuries and managed to survive about 70 years after the Spanish began occupying Mexico. Old World diseases brought by the Spanish settlers appear to have resulted in very high fatalities, disrupting the society and eventually causing the city to be abandoned. One of the best-preserved coastal Maya sites.

From our visit:

Lily, our guide.

The Castle

The building was deliberately built crooked. Something to do with the alignment with the sun.

Tulum was a great Mayan seaport, built on a cliff beside the ocean.

It looks all nice and manicured. The ruins are surrounded by jungle on three side and ocean on the fourth. It is only accessible by walking down a road through the jungle.

I pushed the contrast and saturation to bring out the carvings. See the face at the bottom?

Seaport

The Mayans are gone, but there are still local residents...

Coati

October 30, 2018

More of an ongoing series:

Out of Business:

No more Country Cookin

November 9, 2018

Hurricane Michael hit the Panhandle of Florida on October 10 as a Category 4 storm, winds two miles an hour less than a Category 5. The storm caused huge amounts of damage; everyone saw pictures of the devastation. A month later, on November 8, I drove from I10 down to just north of Wewahitchka in Gulf County, one of the hardest hit areas of the storm. The drive took me through Calhoun County including through the towns of Greensboro and Blountstown.

The talking heads did not do justice to the damage the storm caused. What the news reports do not give you is a sense of the size of the area that the storm hit and the breadth of the damage it caused. Mile after mile, as far as you can see, trees are snapped off like twigs and man-made structures damaged or destroyed.  I have been around for a day or two (no jokes), have seen a lot of storm damage of one kind or another, but nothing prepared me for what I saw on that drive.

There was a lot of work going on, clearing and cleaning up. But even a month after the storm, the damage is astounding.

Here's the thing: everyone donates right after a catastrophic storm, but there is still a huge need in the area for money to rebuild, for food for those who lost homes and jobs, for the basic necessities we take for granted like soap and toilet paper. If you want to help folks, there are lots of agencies still taking donations: reach out to them. We are.   

A few pictures from the drive. We didn't stop to take pictures and do closeups, folks there have enough on their plates without people stopping to take pictures. These were all taken from inside a moving vehicle with my little DX0. 'Most are not the quality I like but they give a sense of what hit the area.   

November 8, 2018

Tampa Harbor

Goodbye, Tampa

Cruising away

Last of Tampa Bay

Sun on the ocean

Sailing into Night

Coming into Key West

Docking

Wilson and a friend at Fantasy Fest- Key West

Departing Key West- sunset

Sunset #2

Flags and Time

Mexican Para-sails

Sunrise #1

Sunrise #2

October 27- November 1, 2018

2018- Hither and Yon slide show.  

The images in this blog are thumbnails... cut down images to fit in a blog. As such, they lose a lot. You can see them in my Galleries as full size images. Click here to go to my 2018 Gallery. From there you can visit my other galleries, going all the way back to 2004.