A BEAUTIFUL Day in January

Today was the day I have been dreaming of:

1. Warm Sunshine
2. Clear Skies
3. Low Tides
4. Good Shells

 My definition of Paradise! As the commercial says, "Priceless" !

It was a perfect day, I wore the "Shell bag lady" garb, and pretty quickly came out of the sweatshirt. I probably would have been fine in the shorts too, but all was perfect.  The low tide was after the sunrise, so we could see very well to find all the treasures. My favorite type of shelling is in the tidal pools, so many wonderful things to see, living creatures, shells and the promise of some sort of surprise and adventure.  The last few trips we have found that the shoreline along Gulfside City park has completely changed.  Even at more than a negative 1 low tide the sand bar does not show itself and as a result, there are no tidal pools. Earlier this year there was a newly formed sandbar right in front of Ocean's Reach, but alas it is also gone. Today we had sort of a tidal pool due to a flat area of the beach.

Right along the ridge there were so many shells partially buried and just lying there in groups. The sand was fairly loose and we would just run our fingers through to gather the shells. Have a look for yourself! (If you click the pics, they will open full screen for your cybershelling enjoyment).

Do you see a double jewelbox, olives, augers, a mini horse conch, a turban and a wentletrap? (I missed it!)

More Olives, juvenile fighting conchs, bubbles, and irregular worm shells!

A sand dollar!

It was so much fun! We had the best day yet! 

I even found an angel wing....not perfect, but I'll take it! Look how big it is!

...and 2 more alphabet cones! Again, not perfect, one actually somewhat deformed! But with our recent dry spell, it gives us some hope for finding them!

We found an array of shells, a wide variety! Such fun!

Check out the size of Hubby's apple murex!

Stay tuned....another negative low tide after sunrise tomorrow!

::Hugs::

We Got an Extra Sunrise!

 We intended on packing up to go home on Friday, go to the Sanibel Luminary Friday night and leave very early Saturday. We had discussed the possibility of staying an extra day to catch the Lowest tide at Sunrise Saturday morning and going to the Captiva Luminary and golf cart parade, this would mean Hubby would have to take an extra day off from work on Monday.  Hubby came up with an idea that would give us the best of everything....stay and shell the low tide, Saturday morning and leave afterwards. Kinda like getting an extra day! We can save the Captiva Luminary and parade for another time!!

I feel like we got a bonus!! It was a BEAUTIFUL morning! 

 Notice the dolphin near the horizon....how about that for a photo opportunity?! I wasn't sure I timed it right but I got it!!!

This was another day of minis! So many beautiful minis!! See for yourself...if you click these 2 pics you can do some Cybershelling of your own!!

 We shelled for a couple of hours and just thoroughly enjoyed our extra time! We got back home, ate our apple fritters for breakfast while I cleaned up the shells and still were able to get on the road a little after 10:00! Kind of like getting a bonus!! :D  I didn't take the time to lay everything out in order, but did snap some pics of our loot with my phone! LOTS of minis!!

Mini Olives , double jewel boxes, a wentletrap, juvie fighting conchs

Mini paper fig (center), turbans, olvies, lightning whelks 

The beauty of having our own place was these will be waiting for me to finish cleaning up when we get down on our next trip! 

It looked like it was going to be another wonderful day!

I hope you enjoyed our Christmas trip because we sure did! Now back to REAL life! :) We watched the temperature drop as we headed up north....we started out at 73 degrees and it was 41 when we arrived home! Hubby made the whole trip in his shorts.....with a jacket, I changed to long pants in Jacksonville, but kept the flip flops on until I got home!! Now it's back to the fuzzy slippers!! :)

::Hugs::