Valentine’s Day

Posted: February 18, 11:24 am | (permalink) | (1 comments)

photo by Magda Galambos; used with permission

I’m not a fan of red roses or chocolate. My idea of romance was a walk along the beach looking for driftwood and seashells, holding hands. Directly off our bow was Sunset Beach; the name alone made it the perfect place for our walk. There had been a big wind yesterday so we were anxious to walk along the high tide line and see what had been cast up.

The beach was almost empty, except for a local man sitting on a rock looking out to sea, and a woman exercising a joyous wet ball of orange dog-energy that made me miss our dog Mandy. We walked along the sand until it turned to rock and scrabbled along that a bit too until it got so rough we had to turn back, pockets bulging with our finds of shells and some pale green beach glass. We set the shells to soak in a bucket of water to loosen the dirt and, in lieu of the traditional elegant dinner, went out for pizza. (They make a mean pizza here at the resort!)

Imagine our surprise next morning when we started on the shells with a brush. Dan picked up one of the prettiest shells, a small, perfect conch, and found a snail-like face looking back at him! The little guy must have retreated deep into his shell during the harsh environment of the storm and being cast up on shore, but felt safe enough in our bucket to come back out and peek around. We headed back to the beach and walked up toward the sea grass beds near the point, and wished the baby conch well, and hurled him out to safety as far as Dan could throw.

Bucket of pretty shells

Hey, someone's in here!

The aptly-named Sunset Beach, photo by Magda Galambos; used with permission

(About the photos by Magda Galambos – she's the woman with the dog we met earlier. You'll no doubt see more of her work in future blog stories.)