Interesting evening lighting

We have these sunsets here that are not direct sunsets, this is looking kind of northwest rather than straight west, but I think the light is refracted by all the water, bent by the hill, and voila, here's the result.  If you flew directly over the hill and kept going, you'd be over water again in a short distance, the bay is up there.  So you get these fire in the sky kind of moments.

I like how it turns the water red.  Sort of biblical.  And those spots where there's no color, like the one that puts a water colored stripe between the red parts of the river.  And it's different every time.   New show every day, twice a day.  With some awesome moments in between.

On the other side

I post a lot of pictures of the beach, so you might think there's only one side of the town I live in, the one that faces the ocean.

Well, there's another side, and that one causes probably more problems around here than the ocean does.  The other side is a river.  Or perhaps more accurately, an estuary.  It's salt water until you get pretty far inland, where it peters out - or actually, begins - in a number of marshes.

It runs north to south, and of course that creates other issues, like when dolphins get trapped in it because they naturally think to get out they need to go south, but they hit a dead end and don't know what to do.

Anyhow.  We went for a second long walk this morning, after our beach walk, and Pablo took me around a block where I've never gone before, which I really didn't know was there, and which has a mini park fronting on the river.  He wouldn't let me stay long, but I got a couple of shots of what's on the other side of town. 

This one looks northish.  The bridge is the Highlands bridge, which is the end of town I'm closer to.

One of the parks I've been walking in is on the hill on the left side of the picture.

 

Looking southish, towards the Rumson Road bridge and downtown.

 

Across, part of Rumson, and one of the little islands that take up the juncture between the Shrewsbury and Navasink rivers.  The wake is from a small powerboat that had just passed by.

Mostly this is powerboat territory.  The current is very strong and fast, so you need to be a power kayaker to manage it without a motor.  It has lots of sand bars, and those move around a lot, so you often hear of boats getting grounded in various places or getting their bottoms messed up.  Deep enough for larger boats, if you're careful and watch your depth finder.  Those guys generally head out for the bay to do whatever it is you do on a boat.

I don't do boats.  I like to be near water, but not on it or in it.

Today is (was) Cid Day

I just wasn't able to get to it this morning.  I put something on Facebook, but not here.  So here I am now to do it.

This was Cid in 2000, when I first brought him home from the shelter.  He was not quite 10 pounds of squirmy happy pup, debatedly German Shepherd and Rottweiler mix.  He looked like "generic dog" except for his marbelized coat (one of the neighbors used to call him Marble), and was probably the happiest dog on the planet.

He was born probably in late February of 2000.  He died on this date in 2009.  Nowhere near a long enough life for my liking.  I still miss him terribly, six years later. 

He was my first dog.  He can't be replaced, but Pablo does a darned good job of filling in, and even has some Cid-isms that he does on occasion, that make me think Cid's spirit might have moved into Pablo in some mystical way.  I'm glad about that.

speaking of light

This was at about 6.30 this morning.  The rest of the day will look burned out, literally and figuratively.  By the way, this is straight out of the camera, no retouching except to level the horizon just a smidgen.  Crooked horizons make me nuts.

Some days we get interesting effects at dusk.  Dusk over a large body of water has a particular color to it that you don't see anywhere else.  On occasion the sunset brings more color to the east, away from the sun, than it does around the sun itself.

And the problem with getting up early enough to catch the good morning color is it makes the day far too long.  Especially since I think I am part vampire.  I don't feel well if I have too much sun, and actually sitting on the beach in the afternoon gives me awful headaches.  Has since I was a kid.  I remember downing far too many Alka Seltzers when I was a kid.  Plop plop fizz fizz, it was the only thing that could take away the pain, but drinking it made me nauseated. 

As I was trying to explain to someone a couple of weeks ago, the people who live here full time rarely go to sit on the beach.  I don't get the "sit" part, for one thing.  Beaches are for walking, not sitting.  We walk, we ride the bike path up into Sandy Hook, we go to the parks and walk in the woods, but we generally do not sit on the beach.  That's for bennies.

I really prefer the beach in winter.  No people, no noise, just me and the dog and nature.  That's when it's best.