April 25 and 26, 2019

This is a family trip, with the primary impetus being a visit to my aunt and uncle in Hernando Beach, Florida. My brother and I had visited them several years ago, when I first started this blog, and had such a good time that we wanted to repeat it. This time, we added a couple more siblings to enhance the experience.

My aunt is one of the youngest members of my father’s family, and is, in fact, closer to my age than she is to my father’s. With only a ten year age difference, I consider her to be more of a contemporary than an aunt.

In late afternoon, we arrived at their home which is situated on a canal in Hernando Beach. The weather was lovely, warm with a gentle breeze from the nearby Gulf. We enjoyed the sandhill cranes on the other side of the canal, the skinks on the screen around the pool and the ducks in the water.

As friends and family do, we gathered around the kitchen and shared good conversation while preparing meals. We met a cousin we hadn’t seen since he was a child, and he joined us for dinner each of the days we were visiting. He had lived on the east coast almost all of his life, and there weren’t many opportunities to connect with his Iowa and Minnesota cousins.

After dinner, we enjoyed the saline pool with its bathwater warm water – what a treat for us who had left 40 degree weather just a day earlier, along with forecasts of snow and rain.

The home’s location provides wonderful views of the surrounding area, and some especially beautiful sunsets and sunrises. We watched the sunset, but passed on the sunrise.