Birthday Week Trip #1 Day 2

Today was an absolutely gorgeous day! It was cool and dry this morning and we opened the windows and doors at our house and kept them open until well after lunch time.  After a walk around the neighborhood, we headed out to Gulfside City Park about 4:00, an hour or so before low tide. Going to the beach is always such an adventure....like that famous box of chocolates you never know what you are going to get....or what surprises the beach will present to you!

 

Today was another adventure.....the beach was covered with these little 'gooey balls' I called them.  It was almost like they were little balls of sea pork with all kinds of shells attached to them....they would trap shells around them both on the beach and in the water!

I would like to add that it was also rather smelly, with promises of getting more and more that way as they bake in the sun!!

We had a great time searching for shells, both among the gooey balls and found a few buried treasures! I didn't get a very good picture of this guy (a lightning whelk) because I was too excited to dig him up to see if he was alive or not.....he was empty so he got to go home with us!! 

I dug around in the sand and found quite a few other beauties to include 3 of my favorites, Horse conchs, a baby's ear, and several tulips!!
Here are the pre-cleaning pics of our finds for the day!! Not a bad day....this was only about 2 hours of shelling!! I will post the cleaned shell pics tomorrow. I still haven't found my alphabet cone, but it's still early!!

I did find several live jingles, which was a first for me!! I've always found one piece, there were several with both sides, and I managed to bring some home that were no longer alive...  Here are three live ones that were joined together!! I guess you could say triplets!! :)

I played with several today that were attached to the gooey balls...

I saw this awesome Sea Anemone and couldn't resist snapping his pic as he was sifting through the surf...

We found this Bald eagle that had taken over the Osprey Nest at Ocean's Reach, and heard that earlier today there were a pair....how awesome is that!!!

We had an awesome day of Beach Therapy and it was such a beautiful day.....I just have to share...so sit back, crank up your speakers....and just relax for a few seconds!!!

More tomorrow!!

::Hugs::

Cheri