Footprints in the Sand

If you've come looking for pictures of the Redneck Taj Mahal, please scroll to the bottom. For a more recent view of the house, with interior images, please click here. 

Today was a gorgeous early spring day, so I took off down to Scotland, Maryland, where a friend, Miss MA, is in the late stages of building a beach house. The house formerly on the property was hit pretty hard by Hurricane Ernesto, so she's rebuilding on the original footprint, which is only about 25' by 25'.

We took some time and walked up and down the beach which sits about 40' in front of the cottage and looks out over the widest part of the Chesapeake Bay, just above Point Look Out and just below Point Look In.

These are the buoys that local crabbers use to mark where their crab pots are located. Each crabber has different colours, shapes or numbers.

As we walked along, picking up pieces of beachglass, we noticed lots of footprints in the sand and speculated as to which animal would have made them. That's my shoe at the bottom of the picture, so you can see how large these prints are in comparison. They're probably from a Great Blue Heron, which can be up to 55" tall!One set in particular fascinated us - sets of footprints on either side of a straight line, indicating a dragging tail, perhaps? Everything was lovely until we saw this gawd-awful house under construction. Apparently, it took the owner quite a while to find an architect who would build this ghastly place. It looks like a reasonable five-story house, until you realize that the columns have no association at all with the house. They are just an appendage around the edges. In the end though, we were greatly cheered by this picture-postcard perfect view of the Patuxent River, with the Chesapeake Bay beyond. Thanks for a {mostly} great day, Miss MA!!!