Shells, shells and more shells…

Everyone was well rested this morning when we awoke.  We had breakfast and decided since the weather was nice, we would venture down to the beach to see what we could find.  I assumed the water would be much more clear today since the waves has died down a great deal from yesterday.  We quickly discovered that the water was not clear and that the waves were still somewhat large enough to keep the water churned up.  Right now, the water itself feels very good, but you cannot see anyting on the bottom because the water is really nasty.  In all of my times to the beach, I never recall the water being that nasty (brownish – I guess from all of the sand and various sea items that the hurricane pulled ashore).  It almost does not seem like the same place we were at on Saturday evening when we were at the beach and the water was unbelievably clear and beautiful. 

Although the water itself was nasty, we did discover what we anticipated would be there – lots of shells.  On top of that, the beach has shrunk – the distance from the end of the boardwalk out to the water was probably 15+ feet shorter than on Saturday.  The hurricane caused such disturbance in the water that it seemed as though the waves just swallowed up the sand.  The beach also slopes more gently down to the water and the slope itself is long, starting soon after stepping off of the boardwalk.  Just strange how powerful a hurricane can be, and that it was still so far away from us that it was able to make these kinds of changes to the beach.

Anyway, as I mentioned, we discovered lots of shells.  Staci and I have never seen this many shells on any beach in all of our life.  Since the water was so nasty, we spent the next hour or more just searching through shells that had been washed up (and continue to be at this point).  There were literally thousands in various pockets down the beach.  One particular pocket of shells was only 50 or so yards down the beach, so we camped out there for a while.  The first picture below shows a good example of how many shells were in this particular spot.  We gathered up the ones we thought were cool or different, most all of which had no visible flaws.  Check it out below – second picture.

Unbelievable amount of shells bunched together.

Awesome looking shells.

Anyway… I am relaxing on the deck, the girls are napping and Staci is out playing at the beach for a while.  Hope the weather is nice back home… it sure has turned off beautiful here.