Scenes from Mattheson Hammocks Park

Mattheson Hammocks Park is one of our local parks that seems to me to be one of those things locals keep to themselves. There is an atoll, which is man made, but it is fed by the ocean, which you can see from path around the water. It is shallow, framed with palm trees, and really very beautiful. Wikipedia calls it an urban park, and it is near downtown, but it does not feel urban...especially during the weekdays when it is not crowded at all. As part of our kick off to summer, we took a visit there last week. (We are having our summer break from school from now until March.)

Note to self: picnic on the picnic tables, not in the sand, and actually that is what we did after we washed the sand out of the vegetables and skimmed off the hummus.

We'd never been to the other side of the park where there is access to some sea grass, but Rob told me about it and I took the kids over there too.

We found some small shrimp.

A horseshoe crab.

A Portuguese man o' war - fortunately this was a little one!

Now that's a Portuguese man o' war!  I don't know how we missed seeing this thing until the very end.  We walked all around it.