Sunrise in Tampa

Posted on December 10, 2020 by dinajohnston

I was up early on a Saturday morning in October and headed out to a small beach near my house that sits right under the airplane pathway to the airport. Although it wasn’t that early since the time hadn’t changed yet and the sun wasn’t coming up until 7:30. I stopped at Cypress beach and walked out to catch the sun coming up over the water.

There was hardly any one there this early so I had the little beach area all to myself.

I only saw one plane coming in. The water is mostly grass beds and drops off very deep. I’ve heard there are sharks here so you don’t see a lot of people in the water. I think people come here just to get out and it’s a popular sunset spot.

Pretty butterfly on the ground.

A few of the birds were a hawk and a little blue heron.

Pelicans guarding the slow wake signs. I’m sure there’s also manatees out there with so much of the area being grass beds but I didn’t see any this morning.

Davis Islands yacht basin

Posted on October 27, 2020 by dinajohnston

I hadn’t been over to Davis Islands in a while so I headed over for a walk around the yacht basin at the end of the island. There’s a small dog beach there that has a great view of downtown Tampa. The dogs looked like they were having fun jumping in the water. I wanted to join them but that water was not too pretty right there near the shipping channel.

Two panos of downtown in front of the small private airport on the island.

There are usually a few planes taking off on a Saturday morning but none were leaving this morning in mid-August.

Shots above of the quiet lagoon.

Looking closer, one of the docks at the boat ramp has gone missing. The other one is still there but looks like it’s about to crumble.

Missed the moon but caught a sunset

Posted on April 5, 2018 by dinajohnston

From my driveway in late January. Saw this when I got home and thought it would be cool to try and get the moon coming up over Tampa the next night.

Tampa across the bridge. No moon coming up so I headed into Tampa.

I was hoping to get a shot of the big super blue blood moon rising above the Tampa skyline in late January so I brought my camera and headed over to a tall parking garage just off the bridge after work. On the moon side there was a cloud bank so i wasn’t going to get a shot of the moon just over the city.

I turned around and walked over to the other side of the parking garage and saw the above. A plane coming in for a landing near the Tampa airport just as the sun was going down. I stood for a while watching the planes come in. It was a beautiful cool night.

Sun’s all gone. Sometimes when life gives you lemons, turn around.

SkyWatch Friday

Back to reality

Posted on November 5, 2015 by dinajohnston

Our vacation in Arizona was over and it was time to head back to Phoenix to catch our afternoon flight home to Florida. We took I-17 straight down from Flagstaff. The drive was amazing (I’m comparing it to our years of driving between Atlanta and Tampa). I kept taking pictures through the window while Brett was driving. Long winding road with very few billboards. My favorite sign was the picture of the elk crossing but I was disappointed. We didn’t see a single one.