I have been walking the beach every morning since I arrived here in Alabama at the end of June.  Every day I find something new and interesting.  The beach is different every day.  I decided to make a journal of what I find every day.

I walk on the beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama at the Gulf State Park.  There is a long pier where you can go fishing or just walk out.  On one side of the pier there are condos.  On the other side it is the State Park and there is nothing there.  I generally walk down the State Park side.

Condo side:

State Park side:

The pier has a snack shop, gift shop and restrooms.  You can buy a fishing license here also.  There is a large space with picnic tables. This is all free to use.   I have not walked out on the pier yet.  It costs $2.00 to just walk out on the pier and $8 if you want to fish from the pier.  I am going to do it one day.

Walking the beach in the morning is the best part of my day.  I usually get there between 6:00am and 6:30am!  Yes, very early for me.  It is warm then and when I finish between 7:30am to 9:00am it is hot.  So I get up and go early every day to beat the heat.  Plus at that time I don't have to wear suntan lotion.

My first morning in Alabama I woke up at 5:00am with a backache from sleeping on a blowup mattress.  Instead of tossing and turning I thought I would just get up and go to the beach and see the sunrise.

When I arrived at 6:00am, I was surprised at how hot it was.  When I finished at 7:30, I couldn't believe how hot it was.  I thought how will I ever walk at 10:00am or 11:00am in this heat.  So I have stuck with the 6:00am walk ever since.

I have walked the beach every morning but two since I have been here.  Both days it rained.   I have found it could be raining here in Foley and not raining down at the beach.  So I go every day regardless of what the weather is like here at the apartment.

I am totally mesmerized by the beach.  I could spend all day there.  I don't eat breakfast before I go so between the heat and the hunger I do get home in a reasonable amount of time.

I have a lot to say and a lot of pictures of the past month at the beach, but I will start with today and slowly tell you about the past month in later posts.  Some days I have a lot to say and pictures to show and other days not too much.  So on the days when there is not much new and exciting, I will share something from the past  walks on the beach.

Today when I arrived my first impression was that there was no breeze at all.  The flags were perfectly still.  There is an American Flag, an Alabama Flag, and then the third pole has two flags.  One tells you how rough the surf is and the other one says that there is hazardous marine life.  There usually is some sort of breeze.  But today there was none.

Well, let's start our walk on the beach today!

I walked down the State Park side.  The water was very calm.  There were very few people out on the beach today.

My morning walk on the beach is supposed to be my exercise, but I am enjoying it so much that, most days, it turns into just a stroll on the beach instead of the power walk that it is supposed to be.

There usually are not very many sea shells on the beach but the last few days there were a lot, so I was quite distracted looking at the shells instead of power walking.

Below are some shells I found.

As far as the shells go there is nothing spectacular most are just plain and boring.  None the less, I still look at them.

Every day when I walk the beach, I see my friend.

After googling, "bird at the beach with long neck and long legs", I identified him as a Great Blue Heron.  This bird is just amazing.  You can get within about 8 feet of him.  Needless to say everyday when I walk by him I stop and take about 20 pictures of him.  There are several of them and there is also a baby Heron.  Here is a picture of the baby.

These birds just stand very still and look out at the ocean.  They walk very slowly.  When you get too close they take off and fly a bit down the beach.  It is amazing at how close you can get to them.  So I can't resist taking pictures of them.

I was excited to watch the one bird today.  He was standing looking at the ocean.  You could tell he was looking for a fish.  He was slowly creeping into the surf and curling his neck and getting low.

Well, after a few minutes of watching him, he found one.  By the way I am just calling the bird a him.  I haven't determined if it is a male or female.

It was so interesting to watch him eat this bird.  It was not what I was expecting.  He took the bird and walked back away from the water.  Put the fish down and pecked at it.  Picked it up and put it down a couple times.  Picked the fish up and moved a couple times.  I think he knew I was watching him.

I quickly turned on my video on my camera and caught him eating the whole fish!  The video is grainy because my zoom doesn't focus well, but you can see that he swallows the whole fish.  You can see his neck get big where he is swallowing the fish.  This was just amazing to watch!

I didn't notice the lump in his neck from eating the fish until I watched the video.  I would have video him a little longer if I had noticed this when I was taking the video.  This was just awesome to watch.

So this was the best "bird" experience of the day.

As I walk along the surf, I always look into the water to see if I can find anything interesting in the surf.  Today as I walked along there was a stick sticking out.  It startled me at first.  Upon closer look, it had a loop on the end of it.  So I went over to see what it was.  It was a net stuck in the surf.  So I went and got it.  Got a little wet trying to retrieve it.

This was towards the end of the walk.  So now as I finished up my walk, I was trying to catch fish in the net.  Because the surf was calm you could see in the water and see the fish floating around.  There were some minnows, a couple blue crabs and a couple bigger fish.  I couldn't really get any as I had to wade out too far to do it.  Since I had my camera and phone on me, I didn't think that would be a good idea.  Yeah, your right, I really wouldn't have waded out and gotten my pants all wet.  I'm turning into a nature girl, but not at that point yet.

I'm sure it was very comical to watch me walking with this net trying to catch a few of these fish.  I tried a couple times then gave up.  Good thing this is the part of the beach where there is no one!

 One other thing that I saw today that was interesting was the fish jumping out of the water.   Someone that works with Mark said that there is a predator fish in the area and the fish are trying to get away.  This is also really amazing to watch.  The fish jump like crazy out of the water.

As I was watching them leap out of the water today, I thought of my niece Julie.  The song from the Nutcracker came on (Julie is studying to be a ballet dancer).  The song made me think of Julie.  But what was so funny was that the song actually went with what I was watching.  I couldn't have picked a more perfect song to watch all the fish leaping out of the water.  It was very amusing.  

I feel bad for the fish though, knowing they are jumping out because someone is trying to eat them.

As I was walking along today, Josh Groban's "Ave Maria" came on my Zune.  This was absolutely beautiful, listening to him sing this song and looking out at the Gulf.  The water was very calm at the time, no waves.  Again the song really went along with what I was looking at.

Up until today I really couldn't name which song of Josh's is my favorite.  I have so many I just love.  It is really hard for me to pick just one favorite.  But, I have to say, if you asked me today I would say "Ave Maria".  This was also towards the end of my walk today.  So it was a perfect way to end my walk on the beach this morning.

Well, today's walk was very enjoyable.  Looking forward to see what tomorrow's walk on the beach brings!