Bag Lady Night

We decided to try our luck again last night, so Team Cheri headed out on another adventure. It was obvious pretty quickly that the shelling was not going to be as it had been the night before.....Pretty colors that we can't resist picking up....Scallops...

Olives, Tiny Horse Conchs....

I even found a first for me....Cheri called it when she saw it, and I looked it up...it's called a Beautiful Crassatella...

It's hard to tell in the picture, but the point closest to my rings is a vivid orange...
Here are a couple of better pics in the daylight...

We decided to head back to Gulfside, still a few hours before the low, but still a nice walk....Once again we were greeted by a Cane Toad....these guys are so Huge....I thought at first it was a Rabbit!!

We walked past him, giving him his space (after his photo shoot) and headed to the beach, Cheri very quickly found an Alphie (Alphabet Cone)...not perfect, but good enough for me!! 

We walked a long way, and saw very little....even those Millions of Dosinia that were there the night before were gone!  She did find a Huge Horse Conch buried....

We left him for the next 'Avid Sheller'! ;)

I found, what we call a Pony, a middle sized Horse Conch....with some nice color...

....and we found some Horse Conch Egg casings, that appeared to be empty!

 That's great because it means that hopefully they will grow up and we will be on our way back from the awful Red Tide last summer! BTW, I wanted to mention that the water by the causeway has been a beautiful blue everytime I've gone across it these last two weeks....such a welcome change, I hope it stays that way!

Ok...Back to the beachwalk...

Cheri Found a Big Horse Conch that she decided to keep....though its covered with tons of barnacles....

The color and the tip look really good....so this will be her project for a while!!


Further down the beach we started noticing trash and toys spread all over the place....funny, we had just mentioned that it had gotten better....

well that thought was very quickly over!!  We gathered up at least 6 Beer cans, cups, straws, plastic bags, wrappers ....and lots of toys scattered everywhere...mostly broken.

Cheri stuffed what she could in her backpack, I carried a bag full, she had a bag of trash and was dragging the boogie board.....couldn't believe the mess! I wish I had taken a picture of us walking back....remember, she already had a huge Horse Conch she was carrying! We had to put something down if we saw a shell we wanted! Cheri got pretty good at picking up stuff with her toes out of the water!!

I don't have a lot of pictures because my camera battery died, most of the pics were taken by Cheri with her phone. On the way back, we hit a 'Honey Hole'. The sand was very soft, almost like quicksand, if you stood there you would sink to your ankle....and she spotted this BEAUTIFUL Alphie!....

See anything else there? We both dropped our bags and toys and decided to take our time and check this all out....

She also found this Banded Tulip....that we think is not a standard one from here....the markings are so distinct...

and it's even a bit heavier than a standard Banded....

Here are the ones shells she kept for the night...

A couple of Big Dark Olives, that beautiful Alphie, the Banded and a HUGE Shark's Eye!

I kept a few more! ;)

Oh, I almost forgot! I got an Alphie too!! :)

As usual, we had a GREAT time! Hopefully more to come!

Stay Tuned!

::Shelllady Hugs::