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sandrafriend.bsky.social
Sandra Friend
@sandrafriend.bsky.social
870 followers 580 following 450 posts
Author. Science geek. History wonk. Nature nut. Space Hipster. Recovering guidebook writer now making things up. SandraFriend.com FloridaHikes.com TrailsandTravel.com
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sandrafriend.bsky.social
More recent reads, all mysteries. Griffin: WWII physicist retrieval, bloody military mission; Penny: charming while deadly; St. John: Hollywood glam movie gone bad, didn't see plot twists coming; James: WWII espionage & Hollywood.

#recentreads 📚 #booksky #bookreviews #mysteries
Book cover: The Devil's Weapons, by WEB Griffin. V-2 rocket launch and a man in a WWII uniform Book cover: The Madness of Crowds, Louise Penny. Silhouette of a spruce against a Northern Lights stylizied sky Book cover: The Siren by Katherine St. John. Woman on a beach with waves. Book cover: Last Stop Union Station by Sara James, a woman wearing 1940s attire and a locomotive in a city station
November 30, 2025 at 12:59 AM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
Remembering the random joys of fall at a Midwestern farm stand (Goshen, IN) before winter sweeps these colors off the scene.

#farmstand #fallcolors #autumn #pumpkins #thanksgiving
Mini pumpkins in orange and white Funky mini pumpkins more like gourds with bubbly nubby skins Ghostly white pumpkins Yellow mums
November 29, 2025 at 10:46 AM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
A reminder for this Shop Small weekend: grab an app, explore more of #Florida on your own two feet. floridahikes.com/florida-trai...

#shopsmall #smallbusiness #takeahike #hikingguides #exploremore #gooutside
November 28, 2025 at 8:41 PM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
This book. Wow. I'd avoided reading it because it was so overhyped. I didn't want to see the movie because movies so rarely provide the richness of the author's words. Well worth the read, and the hype was clearly deserved.

#booksky #bookreviews #readthis #literaryfiction 📚
Book cover of Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. A young girl's face, eyes obscured by a version of her in a boat in a Lowcountry marsh.
November 26, 2025 at 4:30 PM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
More recommended reads. Eco-fantasy in Impossible, WWII done well in London, great canvas for Hollywood shenanigans in Mercury, and absolutely everyone who loves flying must read Saint-Exupery's lyrical love letter to its origins.

#booksky 📚 #bookreviews #readmore
Book cover for: Matt Haig, The Life Impossible. An island with a boat sailing past. This is amazing. Unexpected. Magical realism that delights. Book cover for: The Light Over London. Two women with arms linked facing Parliament. Another stunning WWII novel that drew me in Book cover for: Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marta. Spotlights in LA. Fun romp through the crazy days of early Hollywood as historical fiction. Book cover for: Wind, Sand and Stars, Antoine De Saint-Exupery. A vintage aircraft in the dawning sky. An early pilot's tale of life with wings in such a compelling, lyrical style it brings on tears.
November 25, 2025 at 11:38 PM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
Artist's perspective atop a high dune ridge, Rosy Mound Natural Area, Michigan.
#bluesky #bluemonday #mondayblues #naturesky #naturephotos #photosky #hiking
Cedar-topped dunes, blue sky, and the blue waters of Lake Michigan as seen from an observation deck at Rosy Mound Natural Area.
November 24, 2025 at 6:37 PM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
#BirdOfTheDay theme, which is #Mr&Mrs ... heard these two #eagles before we spotted them overhead on a hike north of Orlando in the Gemini Springs Addition, DeBary. #baldeagles #floridabirding
A pair of bald eagles atop a high tension power line pole along a greenway.
November 23, 2025 at 11:50 PM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
#BirdOfTheDay theme today is #shadesofgrey ... one tiny corner of rookery of wood storks at Wakodahatchee Wetlands, Delray Beach, Florida.

#woodstorks #nestingbirds #floridabirding 🪶#birdphotos
Five wood storks atop pond apple trees in a rookery, two on nests.
November 17, 2025 at 12:07 AM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
The Bear River rages through a canyon along the edge of downtown Petoskey, Michigan, with a delightful loop trail around it providing perspectives of its rapids as it tumbles to Lake Michigan.

#stunday #petoskey #nature #Michigan #naturephotos #photography #photosky
November 16, 2025 at 2:08 PM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
Latest batch of lighthearted reads. Golden Hotel a goofy family drama at a shuttering Catskills hotel; the others series cozies with endearing twists.

#booksky #mystery #novels #cozy 📚
Book cover of Last Summer at the Golden Hotel by Elyssa Friedland Book cover of Bryant & May off the Rails by Christopher Fowler Book cover of I Only Read Murder by Ian & Will Ferguson Book cover of Mystery in the Title by Ian & Will Ferguson
November 14, 2025 at 2:39 AM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
Today's #birdoftheday is the #least found on your camera roll. I'll take that literally rather than scour hard drives. This Florida scrub-jay, a threatened species, was somewhere I never expected to find one: along a mangrove shoreline near Charlotte Harbor. #birding #photography #floridascrubjay
Florida scrub-jay pecking through fossil sea shells in front of a mangrove.
November 10, 2025 at 2:36 PM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
Springtime scene along the Little Miami River in Yellow Springs, Ohio at John Bryan State Park.

#photosky #naturephotos #stateparks #yellowsprings #photosky #stunday
Big boulders and small rocks along a rushing river in a forest.
November 9, 2025 at 11:33 PM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
Bird of the Day: Gull along the Mackinac Straits in Cheboygan.

#birdoftheday #standingonthings #gull #photosky #nature #michigan 📷🪶
Seagull standing on riprap rocks along the Straits of Mackinac with Mackinac Island filling the horizon on the far shore.
November 9, 2025 at 2:39 PM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
This was the sweetest idea at a trailhead along a greenway we rode today. Rather than painted rocks infiltrating nature, a one-stop place to share and trade art.
#littlefreeart #rockstop #paintedrocks #shareandsharealike #artsky
An artistic shelf mounted to a trailhead corral fence inviting visitors to take a rock, leave a rock at The Rock Stop, sharing rocks they painted themselves instead of hiding them in the woods
November 9, 2025 at 2:29 AM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
Along the shore of the second largest lake entirely within the continental United States border. And Florida's, for that matter. It's roughly 18 feet deep at its deepest and covers 730 square miles. It's 109 miles to walk around.

#lakeokeechobee #okeechobee #floridatrail #naturephotos #photosky
Lakeshore with pier, open water with waves, and marshes
November 7, 2025 at 10:42 PM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
Tonight's read, my third in her series of alternative timeline space history. Glad I wasn't sipping tea when I read the line "...I stopped Gagarin and Haise from having a literal pissing match." 🤣 Thanks for the laugh, @maryrobinettekowal.com ... another winner here. 📚 #booksky #scifi #space
Book cover of The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal. Two suited astronauts in silhouette holding hands with a red sky beyond.
November 6, 2025 at 12:07 AM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
A quartet of historical fiction based on real life stories. All compelling reads, although time jumps in the Boxcar Librarian made it tricky to follow. Most unique: Sister Stardust, of an everyday British girl pulled into 60s jet setting rock culture.
📚 #booksread #womensfiction #historical
Book cover: Band of Sisters by Lauren Willig. Based on letters and diaries of a group of Smith College, the first all-female unit of students to go to France to help the injured soldiers of WWI. Book cover: The Woman at the Wheel, by Penny Haw. How Bertha Benz drove her husband's success with the invention of an automobile, and drove it across Germany to prove a woman could. Book cover: Sister Stardust, by Jane Green. A young woman falls in with a rocker while working at a stylish London shop and ends off whisked to Africa, falling into the drug, sex, and rock n' roll culture surrounding the popular British bands of the time. Book cover: The Boxcar Librarian by Brianna Labuske. Alternating between the friction between miners seeking safer working conditions and a WPA era set of creatives putting together an official history of Montana, brings the tension of a single corporation lording it over an entire state's populace to light.
November 3, 2025 at 6:01 PM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
Enjoying the works of @scalzi.com. Happened into them thanks to Space Hipsters on Facebook and learned far more about his humorous approach to the sci-fi genre here. Starter Villain is a good starting point but all have been a delight. Hubby isn't a big reader but he keeps asking for more Scalzi!
Book cover Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi, a fuzzy hairy backdrop to the cover text.
November 2, 2025 at 8:43 PM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
One summer long ago, I walked this shoreline and wished for the quiet of this cabin to escape from my everyday life. I escaped to live a writer's life by circadian rhythms, but haven't made it back to #IsleRoyale yet.

#stunday #nature #nationalparks #wayoffgrid #lakesuperior
November 2, 2025 at 7:18 PM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
Enjoying thus far!
October 29, 2025 at 10:52 PM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
More intriguing reads of late. An oddball family tale; a fictional recounting of dystopian utopias that did exist in Florida; an imagined escapee of a failing British colony in America; real dirty deeds in 1893 wrought and ignored in Chicago during the Columbian Expo. #booksky #historicalfiction 📚
Book cover of Carrying Albert Home by Homer Hickam, an unusual romp through his fictionalized family history featuring an alligator from Orlando and his mother's obsession with Buddy Ebsen. Book cover of The Magic Kingdom by Russell Banks, a steamboat on a lush Florida river during the early settlement of a true-to-life Shaker colony near what is now Disney World. Fiction, but heavily based on factual accounts. Book cover of The Vaster Wilds, by Lauren Groff, fictional memoir of a brutalized female servant brought against her wishes with the first wave of English colonists to America. She escapes and learns to live feral. Book cover of Devil in the White City by Erik Larson showing the illuminated 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Nonfiction but reads like a novel, intertwining political intrigue and follies with the quiet rise and rampage of a gruesome serial killer that the police ignored for far too long.
October 29, 2025 at 7:02 PM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
Fall in the Grayson Highlands of Virginia.

#stunday #appalachians #appalachiantrail #naturephotos #mountains #naturephotography #photosky
October 26, 2025 at 5:00 PM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
A fragile moment in a swamp filled with perils.
#blueskyartshow #inside #naturephotos #photography #frogs
A small frog perched inside the bloom of a water lily in a Florida swamp.
October 25, 2025 at 4:32 PM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
Sometimes a week calls for light, fluffy reading. #booksky
📚#cozy #lightreading
Book cover: Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi. Fuzzy cover, fuzzy story about cute fuzzy aliens. Book cover: Scone Cold Dead by Maddy Day. Diner with baked goods and clues that a baby's on the way. Book cover: Here Comes the Fudge by Nancy Coco. Cozy mystery cover with a wedding vibe, a cat and a dog, and a Mackinac Island setting. Book cover: Murder at a Cape Bookstore by Maddie Day. Cover of a bookstore with a bike out front and a potted plant knocked over.
October 25, 2025 at 1:32 AM
sandrafriend.bsky.social
#Stunday at the Mackinac Straits, Cheboygan #Michigan

#lmackinac #greatlakes #gull
Seagull perched on breakwater rocks along a waterway with grassy shallows with a shoreline of Mackinac Island on the far horizon.
October 19, 2025 at 11:40 PM