For all our snow-bound friends up North, I thought Derith Bennett's photo of Sand Key FL would 'warm you up' a bit.

Derith - how about telling us about this photo?

my mind is on the beach already.....
actually, my mind has been on vacation at the beach several times in the last week.
I was in Las Vegas the first week in December and came back to St. Louis to find cold and snow!!
I keep hearing the surf pounding in my head....
Thanks for the picture!

chris

Well, it's 38 degrees here in Orlando this morning. I don't know if you would call that beach weather.

Joanne

It was 70 here yesterday morning,but down in the low 40s by the afternoon...Actually thought about taking the boat out but thought better of it..What a neat looking lighthouse and would love to know the history of it

JKevin: You can read about Sand Key and other Florida lights here:
http://users.erols.com/lthouse/sklt.htm

Lighthouse Sleuth

Sorry I am late with this little story but here goes....

Several years ago between Christmas and New Years Day several members of my family took a trip to Key West for several days. The only reason we went was to go lighthousing and we were not disappointed. Phones calls and emails were made to the airport in Key West for several months prior and I was more than blessed to hire a pilot who had lots and lots of airtime. We flew out of Key West and went North...flying over the reef lights was great fun and the pilot was very sure that he flew around each as many times as I wanted to...plenty of pictures, you know. My photography skills are very amateur but I had a new camera at the time and I broke it in on this trip. Watching the map which led us right to each light was great fun and I even had an opportunity to fly the plane, but just for a little bit.

We flew back into Key West to refuel and check the weather out to the Dry Tortugas and we were off again. The Sand Key Light was one of my favorites as the sun glistened on the water. Most of you know that I really like the spider lights and this one is great. We read the history of all the lights, as told by Bruce Roberts, the entire time we were in the air and the story of the Sand Key Light is sad to me.

From this point, which is not too far off Key West, we flew out to the Dry Tortugas with great views of sunken ships and water animals. In hind sight, I really think I would have liked to walk around Fort Jefferson(next time), but the weather was so crystal clear that I got rid of that thought quickly. Wonder how all those prisoners felt way out there on that remote spot?

The trip was over too quickly and plans were formulating in my head to return as the plane was landing in Key West. It is a trip you might want to make sometime soon.

Derith