Hello Nature-led friends!
I’m back from my annual visit to the In-laws in South Florida. There are no direct flights from our home airport to our destination airport, so when booking our two-leg journey my preferred connecting airport is Charlotte, NC. I like Charlotte (CLT) because it’s a smaller airport, breaks up our in-air time better and has a really good restaurant called “Bad Daddy’s Burger Bar.” If you’re lucky, you might even get a chance to sit in one of their white “Southern Charm” rocking chairs along a long bank of windows! (Read an interesting story about how they got there. Link below.) Allowing an extra-long layover allows us to enjoy our food and walk casually between our arrival and departure gates. It’s always stressful when you have to run a marathon through an airport with your bags, especially when the airport involves a labyrinth of escalators and trams between gates which inevitable makes me feel like someone stuck me in this famous lithograph by M.C. Escher. I’m looking at you Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta airport (ATL) in Georgia!
We fly once a year to visit family and I’ll not be shy about it; I need anti-anxiety medicine to get on a plane. A series of incidences over several years has made it hard for me to get on a plane. I’ll always remember my last conversation with a boy who loved soccer and will never grow old. This January marked the 25th year all passengers and crew lost their lives aboard Alaska Air Flight 261.
My last international trip was to Japan in 2007. The trip was great, and my friends there always make me feel like a rockstar when I’ve had the chance to visit. Unfortunately, on the flight home out of Tokyo’s Narita airport the plane suddenly hit “dead air” during takeoff just before reach cruising altitude. No air, no lift. The plane suddenly dropped several thousand feet! It was all I could do not to scream, because I knew there were young children sitting behind me. The plane found lift and was able to regain altitude and resume a normal flight. I waited the whole eleven-hour flight for deboarding just to have the opportunity to see the pilots and say, “That drop scared the crap out of me!” And the Captain said, “Me too!” I shook my head and said, “No, no, no, you’re supposed to tell me you had it under complete control the entire time!” I don’t feel better knowing the pilots were also scared.
I’m terribly sorry if this post unlocks a new fear of flying for you, but I assure you as I assure myself every time, I have to fly that these incidences are incredibly rare! My logical brain knows this and yet, I feel as if I can feel the world too much. In these circumstances having a long memory is more of a curse. Don’t think I haven’t been telling myself that I wish I were a bit dumber! “Ignorance is bliss” is a common saying in the U.S. and I sure would like to experience that bliss because the weight of the world is quite heavy indeed. I’m striving to encompass the idiom; “let it all roll off of your back like water off a duck” and less of “an elephant never forgets.” The more I pretend not to care, the more my face betrays me.
So why am I telling you all this? Because climate change is real, despite what the Trump Administration says while it quietly scrubs climate data from U.S. government websites. Remember back in the day when people used to talk about “Global Warming” and there would always be some person in the back that would be like, “What are you talking about? We just had the coldest winter on record?!?!” And then Scientists were like, “Yeah, but the world itself is still incrementally increasing in global temperature year after year.” Then the naysayer is all like, “What do I care about the price of dirt in China?” (I’m sorry, that’s an American idiom used when someone expresses that they don’t care about what happens in the rest of world.) That kind of thinking is short-sighted and sometimes intentionally so because life is easier when the only world you care about is the one you make up in your head.
In an effort to use better language Scientists and people who give a damn about the planet and the lives upon it now say, climate change for better accuracy. The climate would still be warming and changing with no human interaction because weather is a cyclical system, but humans are rapidly accelerating it with unknown consequences. This is why I think we need to focus on adaptation and resilience. Climate change is already starting to affect how we vacation.
Bathtub Beach before the start of a reclamation project in Stuart, Florida.
On this recent trip I was hoping to find a new swimming beach that might have a reef close enough to shore that we could swim to and explore. Both places ended up being closed due to reclamation programs in progress. The ocean is washing away Florida’s beaches. Expensive projects are being undertaken to return sand and berms to Florida’s beaches. It is a vacation destination for many people, because of the beaches. Everyone wants a view of white, sandy beaches but without mangroves and sea grapes there isn’t a whole lot to help keep the soil and sand in place.
The other place is Peanut Island in Riveira Beach. There’s no indication that the island or ferry to it is closed on the website. We drove there to find no one else there and cranes and big piles of sand spotted on the island. I wish I had taken a picture. I have looked at the website again right now (March 9th, 2025) and there is no change to the website indicating whether the island is open or closed to the public.
A couple of places we did get to visit was the Juno Beach pier. They now have an entrance fee onto the pier at $2/ a person. I don’t mind though. I think it’s fair to ask for reasonable funds to help keep something open for community members and tourists alike.
We also visited one of our favorite places called Loggerhead Marinelife Center. I didn’t take any pictures this time around but it’s a great place to visit if you find yourself in Juno, Florida, U.S. The Marinelife center is a one mile walk from Juno Beach Pier.
Has climate change affected any of your favorite vacation or holiday places?
Have a great week! Make time to get outside!
Note: Some links are in picture captions.
Additional Links below:
Story behind the Rocking Chairs in U.S. airports https://www.theverge.com/2014/12/22/7434209/how-rocking-chairs-ended-up-in-airports
Website for the Juno Beach Pier and Loggerhead MarinaLife Center: https://marinelife.org/juno-beach-pier/ and https://marinelife.org/
Boat-tailed Grackle Info: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Boat-tailed_Grackle/overview
The Nature-led Life 
They use old Christmas trees to shore up the dunes on some beaches in the UK. You’d need a lot of those for Florida!
I don’t fly! Too much hassle – I like to think my fear helps to save the planet!!
Sxx
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That’s a good use for old Christmas trees! I wonder if any reclamation projects in the U.S. do such a thing? I’ll have to look! I understand. I would prefer not to fly, but my curiosity gets the best of me. I love to learn and experience other cultures. The cost, both environmental and financial, plus the hassle, keeps my travel dreams very modest. I would love to take a trip to Europe just once in my life, but oh, where to go? So many countries! So much to see and I wouldn’t want to rush it. I’d be lucky to narrow it down to just a week in three countries, probably England, Germany and Czech Republic.
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Cape Hatteras is our beach destination. Every year there are more houses falling into the sea, more roads that must be re-routed, less beach. It’s severely overbuilt. We started going 40 years ago when the beach houses were small and the amenities scarce. Much better then.
I agree with Scarlet about flying. I understand a once a year family trip, but it’s actually worse than cars environmentally speaking. I’ve been on one plane in the past 6 years and that was to go to a wedding. I know people who are flying off all over the world several times a week who claim to be environmentally conscious. Only if it’s convenient…(K)
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I’ve been following the news stories about Cape Hatteras and similar places. It’s hard to watch such changes as we get older. It makes me frustrated and angry that we try so hard to do right by the planet, feel guilty about flying, only to have Ultra-Rich people who don’t care about anything beyond themselves use personal jet travel for the dumbest things, like sending an assistant by private jet to buy them an expensive bag in New York without any concern. Some years ago on a passenger boat to Victoria, B.C. we sat with a yacht crew that was going up to retrieve the yacht of the rich owner that sails with them only in Regattas or whenever else and then the rest of the time, either moors the boat or sends this crew to sail it to whatever destination the yacht owner wants them to meet him at. They were a five-person crew and their sole job was to be at the owner’s beck and call to be sent to and sail this yacht from wherever the owner wanted! We need a social global movement that penalizes people for taking more than their fair share of available global resources, but greed seems to always win. I don’t know what we can do beyond just managing ourselves though. I keep hoping someone will find non-violent solutions. I would rather go live and die on a secluded mountain than turn to any kind of violence.
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The ultra rich have no concern for anyone or anything other than themselves. They are too blind to see that when they destroy the earth, they will have no home either. They think they can buy something to save them, but that’s not true. Technology can’t substitute for what humans really need to survive .
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Climate change has not affected our travel, we just don’t travel very much! Flying itself has become worse over the years and so expensive, the short one hour flight from Northern Ireland to London is enough for us these days. Actually, it’s the airports and the journeys between on trains or coaches that are a hassle and just SO MANY PEOPLE. These islands are definitely OVER CROWDED and getting worse!
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I’m sorry to hear the islands are getting so overcrowded too! It seems everyone would like to escape the overcrowding only to find every place overcrowded now! You could take the risk of enduring a strong Spring snowstorm to enjoy Yellowstone National Park without the crazy crowds and traffic at the end of May/beginning of June, but now, even that is out of reach for us. We were supposed to go the year the pandemic hit, when I booked the rooms were $259/a night, but everything got canceled. When I tried to rebook the exact same trip in 2022 the rooms were $600/night! When we had done the same trip in 2007 the rooms had been $80/night. It’s called “eshittification”, when you pay more for the same thing with little or no improvement or expectation of quality or customer service. You may have heard how tipping is getting out of hand here in the U.S. Even self-serve terminals will ask you for a tip now! I literally served myself! Why would I tip a payment screen?!?! (The tips are based on % of the TAXED amount, so they get a few more pennies off of you!) So greedy!
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See one of my recent posts as I’m much happier driving to the coast here. The coast in NI is no more than 70/80 miles for anyone! 😊
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