Going through my pictures from recent years and eras long gone.
I have a few beach stories to share for those who want to read.
My cousin and I took a trip to Florida in August of 2014. We stayed in Fort Myers at a small beach hotel. But after one day of buying groceries on the free local trolley and finding the beach area to be less than appropriate we rented a car to go exploring.
That year we were obsessed with finding “blue water” and, of course, sea shells. Our search for blue water was initiated by pulling up the Florida coast map on my cousin’s new Pixel cell phone. I was simply gobsmacked that the GPS showed the different colors of the ocean on the screen including areas of mysterious blue water. Or maybe I just imagined it?
Guided by the Pixel phone and it’s oceanic shades, we traveled down the coast every day to a new beach trying to find the Holy Grail of blue water and shells.
On the last day we hit the blue water lottery.
Marco Island had everything we wanted. But it was late in the day and it looked like we would have to walk about an eighth of a mile one way to get to the nautical abundance.
We discovered there was a shorter way to get there but it involved walking through what appeared to be a nasty looking swamp stream. We looked at the brackish, muddy backwater with all manner of vegetation in varying stages of decay and decided to make a run for it.
It was way worse than we had anticipated. Towards the middle of the stream I had to tuck my tee shirt up to my neck and hold my beach bag above my head as the briny liquid quickly reached mid body. Meanwhile I had left my poor flips on which were now sucking me deeper into the mud on the bottom.
We inched along until we got to our treasure island. It was indeed blue water with pristine sand and remarkable shells.
Months later when we were reminiscing about that day we realized just how dangerous our swamp adventure could have been. Alligators? Bugs? Prehistoric fish? Flesh eating bacteria?
We were insanely lucky and have the sea shells to treasure for years to come.
I was probably around 13, playing in the surf on a beach at Carmel-By-The-Sea. It’s cold water, can get pretty rough with some nasty rip-tides.
I’m horsing around body surfing and playing in the big waves. I see a little kid, maybe 4 or 5, little guy. He’s getting mauled by the surf. At first, I figured he was having a good time. But he’d get washed up, and dragged back out. Became obvious he wasn’t digging this scene.
He gets washed up again, and I run over and get in front of him as he is being dragged out. I catch him with my legs. And he catches me. I mean, grabbed me like to avoid Grim Death. He looks up and I’d never seen Absolute Terror in eyes before.
I couldn’t get him to let go of my legs, and so kinda hobbled up the beach, out of the waves crashing. We got to the dry sand, and I pried him off me. I asked him if he was okay. Nothing. Just stared at me with those Dead Eyes.
After about 10 seconds, he just snapped out of it, turned and ran up the beach, kinda stiff-legged.
I often wonder if I saved a future Doctor or Teacher, or maybe an Ax Murderer?
Early in our marriage, in the mid 80s, my husband and I decided to splurge on an ocean front room at Jacksonville Beach. Well, a small splurge, as we didn’t have a lot of extra cash to spare. When we checked in, we found ourselves in the smallest room we could imagine, but we were there for the beach, not the room.
Next morning, my husband woke, facing the wall that was barely 2 feet away, looking at a giant booger stuck at pillow level. We checked out and laughed about it for years. And future beach stays were at better quality lodgings.
I strongly prefer solitude, whether on the beach or any vacation.
As such, I spend considerable effort exploring and off-roading my way to enjoy a lonely beach for a while. Just me, wife and our dog, surf-fishing and lawn chairs and cooler, sometimes for days at a time.
Here is an example. This requires a lot of 4 wheeling through soft sand to get here, but not another soul as far as you can see. Wife and dog were on the other side of the truck setting up cabana and chairs.
As it happens, I’m packing now for another trip there. My kind of “beach story”
If anyone wants shelling in Florida, Sanibel Island is famous for that. The OP was near on her adventure. And the shelling doesn’t necessarily involve traipsing through brackish swamp to get there.
I grew up near a beach and now live near a beach. I think of beaches as home. I spend some time there many days; the last 4 days in a row in fact, and will probably go today too. By being nearby it doesn’t require a huge prep to go, and also doesn’t force one to stay for hours to “pay” for the overhead of the effort to get there. Zip down, swim, sun, walk awhile, leave.
To @pullin’s point, we have crowded beaches and uncrowded beaches. I can take a 5 mile walk and see a total 5 people doing the same. Or lay on my towel listening to 5 surrounding groups chatter and differing tastes in music. IMO both have their place.
As to adventures, not many, despite beaching and touring in a lot of countries. But here’s one:
I lived in Panamá City for a few years. The beaches there are not great; more like crappy to nonexistent. The daily tidal range is about 8 feet and the sea bottom is flat mud. So at high tide there’s barely decent sand and muddy surf. At low tide there’s a vast expanse of mud as long as the beach and 1/2 to 3/4ths of a mile wide. Big. At least it smells oceany, not stinky.
One time I went to a nearby but notso-hotso beach after low tide but well before high tide. This was long before mobile phones had been invented. And saw a nearly new Jeep Cherokee - like vehicle well out on the mud. And stuck there, as evidenced by the small gaggle of men milling around it excitedly and no progress getting it to move. Oops. Somehow a tow truck showed up, looked at the situation, and stayed on the beach. I stayed to watch it disappear beneath the waves. Took awhile, but was a tragicomedy watching the people slowly realize recovery was futile and the walk back to dry land was getting treacherous already.
Then the poor helpless owner standing there on the sand watching his car disappear inch by inch.
On a surf trip to Costa Rica, three other guys and myself hired a small boat to take us to a secluded break inaccessible from land called Ollie’s Point in the Santa Rosa National Park. One of the guys I was surfing with rode all the way into the beach and after exploring a little waved me in pointing at something the shape and nearly the size of a VW Beetle. It was a giant sea turtle that had the kinds of precision mutilation you read about inflicted on cattle in UFO stories. As I got closer I noticed hundreds of what I would swear were bear tracks. We surfed a little more and paddled out to the boat where I asked the pilot about “los osos”. No sooner does he say, “No hay osos en Costa Rica”, I look back at the beach and see a black bear sniffing at the turtle carcass. I point and say with my best know-it-all American attitude, “What’s that then?” He says, “Jaguar”. So that’s the day I learned that some jaguars are jet black and that I can’t tell the difference between a small bear and a big cat.
When we lived in Fernandina Beach (NE FL), I secured a gig at a local, beachfront bar/restaurant doing my little one-man-band show. I finish a song and look to my right across the sand and there’s a couple getting married on the beach — minister, bride, groom, best man and maid of honor. As they’re all getting into position, I aim one of the speakers at them and launch into Paul Stookey’s The Wedding Song (There is Love). I’m picking the git-fiddle and the synthesizer joins in with the bass and string section. Then everyone on the deck joins in singing along. Sounded great. The wedding party was obviously grooving along. Applause all around at completion of tune. A magical experience for me; doesn’t happen often enough.
Yaay! You probably made their event, and your performance became a story they’ve told umpteen times since.
Thanks for the reminder …
Around here we have a couple of beach spots that see a bunch of weddings. Some on a dock-like wooden platform above the sand, others on the sand or waded out into the ocean. Really.
I was lolling on our beach a couple days ago near a jetty. It’s readily walkable on top and folks often go out to the end to fish, or just stand anywhere along the jetty and watch the boats struggle with the wild waves & currents.
I spied a couple in wedding gear up on the jetty & took a couple long-range pix. This was their picture-taking session, not their actual ceremony. So bride, groom, about 4 groomsmen & a photog. As I was walking back to my bike, I passed them taking more pix along a pretty trail through the trees. I offered my “Congratulations and good luck.” They both seemed really glowy. So I refrained from my other usual wedding-related comment: “Go baaack! It’s a traaaap!”
A couple decades ago when I was working and living in Daytona Beach myself and a couple friends were out at night riding bicycles and went down to the beach. It was low tide and there was a strong wind from the south so we basically cruised with little effort up the beach. The pitch black crashing waves on your right and the lit up shoreline on your left it was just a beautiful ride. One of us decided we should go all the way to see a friend of ours who had a place on the beach in Ormond about 9 miles up. With the wind at out backs it took no time at all. Best bike ride ever!
We got there and after a few beers it was getting about midnight so we decided to head back. Morons we were didn’t realize just how difficult pedaling back 9 miles into a headwind would be. Worst bike ride ever!
I live a short walk from the beach. About 15 years ago I was walking along the beach and came across a dead elephant seal. It’s not uncommon to see dead harbor seals washed up on the beach here, but that was the first and only time I’ve seen a dead elephant seal. That thing was huge! I looked at it for a while, then continued my walk. On the way back, when I reached the seal, I was surprised to see a man hacking at it with a large knife. I (cautiously) approached him and asked what he was doing. He said he was scientist at the California Academy of Sciences who specializes in skulls. Whenever he hears of an interesting dead animal in the area, he heads out to collect its skull to add to his collection. That was perhaps the most unusual encounter I’ve ever had on the beach.
Here’s a photo. It’s kind of gross so I’ll just link to it rather than embed it in case you’d rather not see it.
I suppose my most exciting beach story is the time I got nailed by a stingray at La Jolla Shores.
Growing up in San Diego I was well away of the “stingray shuffle” and employed it as a matter of course. This time though I had jumped up to get over the crest of an incoming wave and when I touched bottom again–wham!–it hit me right above the ankle.
Luckily I was right in front of a lifeguard tower so I hobbled up and asked for some assistance. They cleaned the wound, applied a pressure bandage and drove me down to the main guard station. Stingray encounters are a fairly regular thing on San Diego beaches so they have the “treatment” down: soak the affected area in hot water to neutralize the venom . I spent the next 90 minutes or so commiserating with a couple of other “victims” with our feet in the buckets, getting refills of hot water every so often. Afterwards the wound was sore for a few days but there was no infection and it healed up with only a small scar.
All in all it wasn’t that horrible of an experience other than some brief pain and a feeling a little embarrassed as passing beach goers gawked at me sitting there with my foot in a bucket.
After my (ex)wife’s bachelorette party, them having been up all night and obvioisly a bit drunk, i was summoned to a local beach to bring more alcohol.
Being dutifull, I located champagne and went to the beach to find 6 gorgeous women illegally skinny-dipping on a very public non-nude beach.
There was a lone surfer who probably enjoyed the spectacle, but I was a little embrassed because, aside from my betrothed, I did not really want to see my friends naked.
They were grateful for the champers though. I left them to it and went to a nearby place for breakfast, then later ferried a bunch of them (now clothed!) home.
Oh, not sure if this counts as a beach story, but I and my ex (same ex) were snorkling off a small beach in a not really touristy area - hard to find in Bali - and we say a guy spearfishing.
Later we went to a tiny beach restaurant… and met the same guy. It turned out he was the chef. We got fresh seafood that evening.
You just can’t beat fresh fish. We were vacationing in Trinidad/Tobago ten years ago and had caught-that-morning tuna at the hotel restaurant. Holy schlamoly, was that good! And just as good two days later when we had it for the third time.
In Playa del Rey, CA, there is a little pier that runs about oh ten yards into the ocean. It is about as high out of the water as a lake pier. It had concret slabs for the deck, I have no idea what it is for.
So one day I decide to go out to the end, watch the ocean waves, imagine I’m on a ship at sea. It’s nice and relaxing. Then out of the blue I see this YUGE wave coming in, probably as high as me. I’m like, oh this isn’t going to be good. I hang on, it hits and I feel the concrete deck rising up. It went by and I found myself still standing. I decided to go home. No one was there. If I had been swept out to sea, no one would have ever known.
It’s not common to see snow on the beach because of the warmer water temps. One year it snowed on Dec 26th. When I went a Polar Bearin’ there was still a lot of white on the beach. After coming out of the water I ran up beach a bit & laid down to make snow angels…in my bathing suit. Except because of a couple days of heating up in the daytime sun & then getting colder again at night, it was more ice crystals than snow. That was my first but not last Jan 1st making snow angels but I did learn something that day - Making snow angels in a bathing suit brings a whole new definition to “snow balls”!
