Changes in the Sand - 8/5/2011

Today when I arrived at the beach there was a nice breeze and it was much cooler than it has been.  I actually walked the whole walk with my jacket on and it was pretty much a power walk today as there was not much to look at and stop me along the way.

I decided to write this blog because there was so many different and new things at the beach every day.  When I arrived at the beach today, I was struck by how empty it was.  There was no one there walking along the shore.

There were no birds:

no seagulls,

no sand pipers, 

no baby sandpipers,

no pelicans!

There was nothing!

OK, there are two birds in this picture but you can see that they are flying away.

Not even my friend was there!

I thought, oh great, I decide to write a daily blog on all the happenings at the beach and there is nothing here to report on!

As I approached the surf, I did notice one thing that I have been watching for the last month and it changed again today - the surface of the beach.  This has been the most amazing thing to me about the beach.  Every day when I go walk the structure of the beach is different.  Most of the time there is a slope on the hard sand where I want to walk.  So this makes walking difficult at times.  Sometimes it is very steep.  Other times it is very mild.  When it is really steep, I have to walk in the soft sand and that is really hard to power walk in.  Then I just end up strolling along.

I'm used to the flat beaches at Hilton Head, SC and Charleston, SC where we went for many years.  These beaches are very flat.  When the tide is out the beach is huge!  There is a lot of hard surface to walk on.  Here at Gulf Shores, AL it is very different.

Because the beach is sloped, it is hard to tell if it is high tide or low tide.  The surf never really seems to move.  I started looking up the high tide online to see when it is.  If I hadn't read the chart some days I couldn't tell you if it was high tide or low tide.  You can look at the pier and tell.  There is a water mark on the pier.  If the water is pretty close to the top of the mark or covering it, I assume it is high tide.  If you can see a lot of the water mark, I assume it is low tide.

This picture I took at high tide.

When I first arrived here at the end of June, I noticed that the beach was sloped.  Plus there were patches of flat then a hill, then flat, then a hill.  

As the days went on it got very steep.  Suddenly one day I arrived and there was a small cliff forming and the beach was getting steeper.  It was really amazing to watch the beach change every day.

So today when I got there I noticed that the "cliff" was back and had gotten bigger.

This just amazes me how the beach changes.   A few weeks back, the "cliff" was really high.  I would say it was about 4 feet high at the max.

Then what was really amazing (I know I use this word a lot but everything truly is amazing to me at the beach!) was that is started to make a second cliff!

Shortly after this picture was taken, there was a tropical storm in the Gulf.  While the storm never hit here, it really affected the surf and the tide.  So I came back one day to find the "cliffs" totally gone!  The beach was flat!

Watching the changes of the sand on the beach has been fun.    I will write more on the tropical storm later.  That day was my favorite day at the beach so far.  That story is a whole blog all by itself!

Because it was Friday, I ended up back at the beach in the evening.  Every Friday night and late Sunday afternoon Mark and I go to the beach.  At this time I usually just sit and enjoy looking out at the ocean and listening to my music.

While I didn't find anything interesting in the morning, I did this evening!  Two girls went walking by and stopped and were pointing.  Then they moved on.  So I got up to see what they were looking at.  There were two fairly large fish swimming together.  They looked like angel fish.  They were blue striped.  They were really pretty.  

My pictures of them didn't turn out but I took some video of them and you can see them.  This was fascinating to watch.  They sort of just stayed in one spot and swam around in circles.  

Check it out!

Last night as we were sitting there looking at the water, we saw a large dark spot on the water.  At first I thought it might have been from a cloud.  But it wasn't.  It moved slowly across the water swirling around at times.  It was really weird.  We couldn't figure out what it was.  We were to lazy to get up and go check it out.

We stayed at the beach until dark.

A great way to start and finish the day - at the beach!  Doesn't get any better than this!

Note: This is Friday's walk.  Sorry for the delay.  Another thing I thought about when I decided to write the daily blog was "could I get it done every day"?  Obviously not!  I will try hard.  Between school registration, tax free weekend shopping and a very slow internet connection it just didn't work out to get this done yesterday.  Writing this blog takes more time than I thought it would.  Now off to work on today's walk!  Have a great day!

PS - I found out what the black spot in the water was today.  Be sure to read Saturdays post.  Hopefully it will be done by the end of today!