January 30, 2017 – Monday
Good news, Betty Jean, Dick, Linda, and Mike are coming to visit the week of Feb. 25 – Mar. 4. We are looking forward to sharing the beauty of the Florida Panhandle with them.
Coastal dune lakes are bodies of water found in dune ecosystems within two miles of the coast. They’re typically shallow and irregularly shaped. Coastal dune lakes are usually permanent water bodies, but their water levels fluctuate substantially since they create transitory interchanges with the Gulf of Mexico. With an estimated 372,000 total miles of coastline in the world, I was surprised to learn how rare coastal dune lakes are, according to the Choctawhatchee Basin Alliance they can only be found in Australia, Madagascar, New Zealand, and the USA. In the USA they are only found in Oregon, South Carolina, and Florida.
We visited our first coastal dune lake, Powell Lake, last week and decide to return to that area Sunday to visit addition lakes. The hikes are not as amazing or varied as the Pacific Northwest but they are lovely.
Today we drove to Mary Esther, FL for eye appointments, on the way home we almost got caught in a “controlled fire burn” gone wrong. We were the last car going east into the fire area. Wish I had my camera out, the flames were about fifteen feet to our right, twenty feet high, and ambers were hitting the car.