beach Archives

Just a little cabana time

There’s a particular kind of quiet that shows up when you finally stop moving. Legs stretched out, sand bright enough to make you squint, and those blue cabanas standing like small, sturdy rooms against the open beach. The ocean keeps its steady line in the distance, and everything else feels like it can wait.

I like how simple it is: shade when you want it, sun when you don’t mind it, and the slow choreography of people coming and going near the water. Clearwater Beach has that wide, washed look—white sand, pale sky, and a horizon that makes your thoughts feel less crowded.

It reminds me that places have their own kind of living, the way a house creaks and settles. A beach does it too, just in softer ways: wind moving through umbrellas, waves folding and unfolding, footprints appearing and disappearing like they were never meant to last.

Cabana time is never really about doing nothing. It’s about noticing the small things that are usually drowned out—salt on your skin, the weight of warm air, the patience of the tide. For a little while, the day becomes as uncomplicated as looking up, listening, and letting the world pass by at its own speed.

Good Morning Clearwater

The morning in Clearwater arrives softly, as if it doesn’t want to disturb anything. A wide, cloud-brushed sky hangs over the water, and the gulf sits calm and steady, holding that early light the way a quiet room holds breath.

Out on the pier, the red roofs feel like small punctuation marks against the pale horizon. The scene is simple, almost spare, but it’s full of little details that make you slow down: the long stretch of wood over water, the gentle fade from sand to sea, the palms in the foreground framing it all like a memory you can step back into.

Good Morning Clearwater is the kind of greeting that doesn’t need much else. It’s a reminder that some places know how to start the day without asking you to hurry. You can imagine the first footsteps on the boards, the distant calls, the mild salt in the air. Even the light feels patient.

It’s a good morning not because it’s perfect, but because it’s present. The water doesn’t perform. The sky doesn’t insist. Everything just is, and that’s enough.

If you’re planning a beach wedding or just craving a quieter kind of Florida morning, this is the mood to remember: calm, clean, and unforced—like the day is giving you space to become yourself again.

Spring Beach Time 1989

Spring beach time, 1989: not quite summer, not quite anything else. The sand is still cool enough to register, the wind sharp in that early-season way that keeps adults zipped up and kids unfazed.

In the photo, my mom walks along the packed shoreline holding my hand. I’m about a year and a half old—still learning balance, still trusting that the ground will mostly behave. A red sweatshirt is tied around her waist like a practical marker of foresight. She carries a weekend bag, the kind you pack when you don’t yet know how long you’ll stay or what the weather will decide. Behind us, tire tracks cut clean parallel lines, evidence that the beach has already been crossed, flattened, crossed again.

The best throwback photos aren’t dramatic. They look like errands. A walk. A hand held without discussion. Forward motion without a destination. The details date it—the haircut, the sandals, my small late-80s outfit—but the feeling isn’t stuck in a decade. It’s the ordinary certainty of being guided across uneven ground before you know how to do that yourself.

Spring at the beach was never about swimming. It was about arriving early, when the shoreline was still half-awake, and letting the day remind you how to be outside.

A picture doesn’t bring the past back. It just proves it happened. Sometimes that’s enough.

End of Summer Cuteness – New Jersey Shore

| ?️⛳️?

| #minigolf #boyfriendswhobeach #avalon

| Angel and myself ended the summer with a trip to the New Jersey shore with my parents (Donna and Ray).

Clearwater Beach Boys

There’s a particular kind of brightness that belongs to a beach town—sunlight bouncing off pale sand, the sky stretched thin and patient, and buildings in the distance that look like they’ve been left out to fade on purpose.

This photo feels like that: two guys tucked into the frame, shoulders touching, hats and sunglasses doing their best to negotiate with the glare. Behind them, Clearwater Beach keeps going—flag up in the wind, a lifeguard stand posted like a small, quiet lighthouse, and the slow movement of people crossing the sand like they’re part of the tide.

Vacation pictures are usually proof: we were here, it was warm, we smiled. But the better ones carry something else, something you only notice later. A little ease. A little ordinary happiness, sun-warmed and unposed, the kind that settles into you the way salt does—subtle at first, then suddenly you realize it’s everywhere.

Maybe that’s what “Clearwater Beach Boys” really means. Not just the place, not just the day, but the feeling of being briefly unhurried. Two lives meeting the ocean at the same time, looking back at the camera as if to say: remember this, even when you’re far from the water.

And if the answer to “???” is anything, it’s this: yes. We’ll take the light when it comes.