SEEN AT THE BEACH

On one of our walks after the hurricane, we found the beach changed but still a repository for the most interesting items. Of course, we always find individual shells. But now we have colonies of them washed up together:

This day, there was also a horseshoe crab shell that its owner had abandoned to grow a better one:

We thought at first this was some kind of sea animal but now we're pretty sure it's a part of a plant or tree or bush. It looks like a woody root. There were several of them, some smaller and some larger:

And though these yucca plants were in the dunes rather than on the beach, they were happily blooming despite the storm recently weathered.

Beautiful day and lovely walk!

BEACH CHANGES AFTER THE STORM

Once again, our beach has undergone a total repositioning of its sand. As we come out past the dunes, we look southward and see a tidal pool. The ocean is on the left.

When we go north, there is stretches more of sand. There used to be a long and then a short sandbar out in the water not far from shore. The shore has now effectively sucked up the sandbar, making the beach twice as wide or more. Then we get to the amazing part.

Once a wide river flowed between the sandbar and upper beach. Now, as we stand on the new part of the beach, we can see it has become more of a narrow creek, flowing down to what has turned into a tidal pool. You can still see the rip rap (big rocks) on the edge that kept the sea from washing the sands away.

And this pier once jutted out into the river. A river that was way too broad to cross except by swimming and currents made that dangerous.

The houses seen behind the pier are glad of the beach changes, I suppose. For years, they were in danger of being washed away by the ocean. Now it's way out in front of them!

BEACH WALK

The tourists have thinned out a little. Not much, but if we go to the beach early, it isn't crowded.

Our beach has changed a lot during the past ten years. Here we're standing on the beach looking back toward the shore. This beach used to be a sandbar that was unaccessible at high tide. Now it's connected all the time, with several large tidal pools at low tide as seen below.

Where once the river flowed between the sandbar and the beach and back to the sea, has now become the tidal pools. This is the end of the river. If you could walk to the left, you'd come over to the houses.

As I said, a few people were out, including this paddle-boarder.

And a guy playing with his dogs.

And this bird. I don't know what it is but I'm sure someone does. He reminded me of a sandpiper except bigger.

He was a cutie, running in and out of the waves!

WALK ON THE BEACH

We went over to the beach to walk yesterday morning. There weren't a lot of people but there were some pretty shells like these:

And evidently a swarm of jelly fish had been caught by the tide because there were a lot of dead ones on the sand. We had to watch where we stepped. Here's one:

And of course, there was a car carrier in the distance. The tiny specks at the bottom are people walking on the beach at the edge of the water:

Our beach has changed considerably since we started coming here fifteen years ago.  Then, the ocean was about ten foot from the end of the boardwalk and low tide meant just a short walk to the water. No more. Now there's a little trek to get to the water even at high tide.

There was also a long sandbar out in the water that was visible at low tide. As the years passed, the terrain changed. The sandbar lengthened. The currents between the sandbar and the beach turned into a river. Then the river narrowed. Now the sandbar is gone and all that remains of the currents are a couple of tidal pools. Sand has filled in the rest. This is a pool as we come off the boardwalk. The ocean is at the bottom of the sky beginning from the left. You can barely see it on the horizon, and it ends at the dark line beginning abour two-thirds across which is where the King and Prince hotel curves out toward the water:

And this tidal pool is further up the beach. The water once ran through it and down to the first pool above. You can't see the ocean at all in this picture because it's to the photographer's left:

As a result of the sands shifting, the houses that once sat close (in some cases, too close) to the water, find themselves a fair distance from the ocean. Dunes have taken over what was once a river and then a tidal pool. Now only a shallow trench lets high-tide water into the pools that are left. I took this photo standing on the beach and you can see how far the dunes extend:

Nature certainly brings a lot of changes!

SAPELO ISLAND Part 6 FINAL

The entire island is owned by the state of Georgia except for Hog Hammock, the only community left of the several on Sapelo settled by former slaves.  Reynolds moved the people on the north end here so, I've heard, he could expand his hunting preserve.

Anyway, Hog Hammock has its own post office, store, cemeteries, churches, et cetera. Even a night club, tiny as it is! No school or hospital though. The four or five children have to ride the ferry to the mainland schools, and if anyone's too sick to take the ferry to a doctor, a helicopter has to fly them out.

Besides the University of Georgia Marine Institute, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources works here. (The Marine Institute came about in 1953 because Reynolds pushed for it; his widow sold the rest of the island to the state in the sixties.)

This is the lighthouse.

It's been renovated and the light works. People can go up to the top, but not outside on the balcony. Several in our group climbed it. This is what the steps look like from the bottom looking up. 

And this is one of the last working range beacons on the east coast. There was another across the way, but it's gone. They were used in conjunction with the lighthouse for navigation.

And here's the beach. We visited one summer and even in the great weather, there was no one on the beach. Not even a footprint. How I'd love to stay for a few days!

And I'll leave with the turkey fountain story. Reynolds brought in Fritz Zimmer, a noted German-born sculptor who resettled in Atlanta, to create the fountain for his third wife. She detested it (During the later messy divorce, Reynolds accused her caring only for money.) and must have let him know in no uncertain terms because one night, he got drunk and decided to blow it up with dynamite. He only succeeded in knocking out the windows of the surrounding buildings (now used by the Marine Institute). The turkey survived!

And he's a fine specimen despite its attempted murder. A shame there's no water in the fountain part. I wouldn't mind having a fountain like this.

And that's it for Sapelo Island. If you ever have the chance, be sure and visit it. Or if you know a bunch of people who can afford it, rent the mansion!

WALK ON THE BEACH

We went over to the beach yesterday early enough to miss most of the tourists. It was very restful.

I didn't know it until we moved here, but beaches, especially on barrier islands, change. We have a huge sandbar where once it was simply sand underwater. Looking southward, the sand on the left is where the sandbar begins. It keeps going northward (behind the photographer and up the beach).

This is taken when we walked northward, and the sandbar continued. You can see a stream, the sandbar, and then the ocean in the distance. Around here is where the sandbar used to begin.

Still going northward. We (and the doggie) are on the beach, looking out over the sandbar toward the ocean. See how high the sandbar's edge is? The stream in the middle used to be quite wide but has narrowed considerably.

The first thing we came across was a stranded jellyfish. In ten feet or so, we found another, and then another. We ended up seeing five or six of them.

Then we saw some horseshoe crabs. Or at least their shells where they had molted. Quite a few were over on the sandbar. On the beach, we only spotted four or five. I guess everyone knows these aren't really crabs.

 

Coming back, I noticed some shells up in the dried seaweed. I suspect someone may have been collecting them and forgot them since usually large ones are found with small ones.

And finally, we came across this. I couldn't figure out what it was till I got closer. It's an orange peel! Someone must have been watching the ocean while eating it, then threw it down. And there are plenty of trash cans around!

I love walking on the beach because you run across all kinds of things.

GREAT WEATHER

We've enjoyed wonderful weather here hot-wise. In the eighties and low nineties. Oh, an occasional thunderstorm crops up but otherwise, it's been great.  There have been years of 100 plus degrees.

On the pier last week in the early morning, we watched a ship come through.

A few fishermen were out, but the adjoining beach was nearly deserted.

We're so lucky to live in a place like this!

TOURISTS

On our usual walk down to the Village, we found tourists out and about.

We sat down on the pier to enjoy the breeze and, with the tide out, a beach view. As we watched, several people got down over the rocks put out to discourage swimmers. It took a while for them to get down, but once down, they conferred with others already on the beach. Then three started climbing back up the rocks and disappeared for a few minutes. When they came back, I got my camera out.

As you can see, the last one is still making a careful way down. However, if you look, there are steps not very many yards up the beach. In the same amount of time, they could have walked up and made a much less hazardous descent. And swam with less fear of rip currents.

Maybe they liked the challenge. Or maybe they didn't notice the steps and the NO SWIMMING sign.