Florida Today

June 4, 2018

My earliest recollections picture my father at the wheel of his 1949 Ford woodie barreling through the pine barrens to the south Jersey shore. I'm a mere toddler sitting in the back of the wood-sided station wagon taking in the sights and sounds on our summer vacation to a seven-mile-long island.

Sharing a narrow spit of land with its sister town Avalon, Stone Harbor is set at the southern end of Seven Mile Island. Residents like to say, "it's cooler by a mile." And, it really is. The island juts out into the Atlantic Ocean about a mile further than any other New Jersey beach towns.

While boardwalks, carnival rides, and over commercialization symbolize most of the Jersey shore towns, Stone Harbor has stayed relatively sprawl-free. The beach is the star attraction. Beachgoers over age 12 must carry beach tags, sold in daily, weekly or seasonal increments. In part the fees help support healthy living sand systems full of trees, shrubs, and plentiful reed grass with roots that fan out beneath the dunes. Dynamic systems that grow and shrink, the island's mighty dunes rise to more than 40 feet in some places and are the first line of defense during the worst North Atlantic storms. Paying for nature's gifts won’t seem so bad once you relax on the soft, wide stretches of white sand.

Thanks to a historically tight grip on development, Stone Harbor remains a quiet and upscale residential seashore town. The borough attracts a summer population of upwards of 25,000 people, but that pales when compared with other Jersey shore resorts. Tree and flower shaded streets are lined with multi-million dollar Victorian and American Foursquare-style houses. Occasionally, you'll spy small single-story cottages, dating back to the 1940s. Flashes of candy colors pop up all over the island. A mere three blocks wide, summer homes have dominated Stone Harbor for as long as anyone can remember.

Long Island Boating World

March 2018

Off the southern tip of Marco Island sits the mysterious Star Wars-style, igloo-like Cape Romano Dome House. Some locals suggest it was the community home of a secret cult, while others claim the structures had been left behind by extra-terrestrials.

A retired oil producing magnate and inventor, Bob Lee built it in 1981. His idea was a completely self-sufficient and eco-friendly home. For many years the rounded, concrete domes were able to sustain hurricane winds, having taken little damage from a series of powerful storms.

Not anymore. Last September Hurricane Irma caused two of the original six domes to collapse. A Naples, Fla.-based nonprofit Oceans for Youth is seeking to raise funds to load the structures onto barges and sink them further off the coast, creating a unique reef which would be home to thousands of sea creatures.

Irma made its second Florida landfall as a Cat-3 storm at Marco Island, a picture perfect resort community with a five mile sugary white beach. It was turned into a mess-- uprooted trees, downed power lines and debris as far as the eye could see. The good news was that physical damage to the tourism infrastructure was not as bad as it might have been. Within a month or so utilities were back up and running and the county was collecting debris, post-haste. The message trumpeted to visitors: "We're open for business."