Sorting Shells

Took a little time today to sort thru the shells I picked up on my recent trip to Florida. I will post about my trip and more details about the shells in the next couple of weeks. I did add around a dozen new kinds of shells, many from Sanibel Island, but also from the Atlantic. I swish newly acquired shells through a container of water; then once home I soak them in a weak bleach water mixture for 15 minutes. Don't want any lingering marine smells. Even so, as I laid them out to sort, I had grains of sand on my table.

The glass sitting on the newspaper is a cylinder vase I bought at a thrift store for $2. Have to have more room to store and display the shells. However, I will go through my other two containers and discard some shells, replacing them with better specimens. The little white plate that holds the olive shells I bought at the same thrift shop for fifty cents. It has a sea shell pattern around the rim. I am pretty sure I am going to leave the olives, sea urchin test, and sea glass on the plate for display purposes. An interesting task to decide which shells go into the 3 containers awaits.

Gulf Beachcombing

One of the reasons I choose a seaside place for our winter get-away is that I like to spend time beachcombing. I wasn’t able to do quite as much as I desired because the weather became inhospitable with a brisk cold wind the last 3 or 4 days of our stay. I knew from some internet discussions that Gulf Shores is not considered a very good place for finding shells. Perdido Key was often mentioned as a better alternative. I did have better success at Amelia Island last year. 

I found a lot of small sand dollars at Perdido Key and a razor clam shell. Most of my finds I pick up because they have texture, color, or shapes that interest me. Very few are intact. I picked up quite a few oysters and kitten paws this year. The small whelk pieces appear to be pear whelk. At Amelia Island last year I only found two tellin with the radiating rays of color. One of the most plenteous shells at the beach a few blocks from our cottage were tellin! Sometimes I am not sure the difference between coquina and tellin. The coquina have circles of color I guess while the tellin have rays of color? They are very similar in shape and size. The pictorial index I used last year seems to call something different a tellin and the photo of coquina includes both circle and rayed color. Other internet sources make a distinction.

The golden and cream shell piece comes from a pear whelk. I found 2 pieces of Scotch Bonnet but one was quite discolored. A small bit of sea urchin is new to my collection.

I don’t really know what I will do with these large oyster shells. I brought home a small piece of driftwood as well. When I set up my display again, I will decide whether these will work; if not, I will discard them. Always easier to discard than to wish one had picked up an item left behind on the beach.

 My husband is talking of going to Arizona next winter instead of a beach. I’ll have to find a different way to pass time.

Travel Bucket

I just finished finally putting 3 years worth of travel photos in albums. I am caught up. I usually did a pretty good job of getting prints and writing information on the backs. When we moved in July 2011, I stockpiled my photos from our June 2011 trip to Hocking Hills, Ohio and the aviation museum in Dayton, and then it was downhill from there. I didn’t even order prints of some of our trips until last year.

We regularly get catalogs of trips from Roads Scholar now. There are a few that interest me: Branson, Christmas at Colonial Williamsburg, San Juan Islands off of Washington state, covered bridges of Indiana. I found I didn’t like the historical lectures on our Quebec trip as much as I thought I would. I did enjoy being exposed to some of the local culture though. I usually learn something on trips thru site seeing and walking/boat tours and reading the tourism literature; often that kind of learning is less expensive than the Roads Scholar trips, but to be fair, they do expose people to people and places to which the individual tourist wouldn’t have access.   I suspect many tour-company trips cost more than independent travel, despite their claims of package savings.

I learned Okefenokee means “trembling earth”; that “colonial blue” does not represent the true colors used by people in Williamsburg (the colors were more vivid than historians originally thought).

    

Truer Williamsburg paint jobs

I learned what a baggywrinkle is:

That stringy mop-looking thing that protects ropes/lines from wires and metal parts.

 

I learned that the H.M.S. Bounty had an unusual below-deck because of the movies filmed in it.

 This is what FotoSketcher did with my photo of the Bounty. I like it.

 

The last two years on Hilton Head and Amelia Island, beachcombing and identifying the specimens has been very educational. I hear Sanibel Island area on the Gulf is a great shelling place. I may need to add that to my bucket list of trips. We have considered the Gulf Shores (Alabama)for a winter break.

In July, my husband and I will visit family in Southern California. We hope to spend a few days in San Diego on that trip.

I would like to tour Springfield, Illinois some day, too. Kauai, Hawaii was not on our previous journey which worked out well as about 2 weeks before our trip Hurricane Iniki closed that island to tourists. Another bucket list possibility. I spent a few days in New York City, but didn’t get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Another possibility.

My brother-in-law is trying to get his sibs and spouses to cruise the Hurtigruten along the coast of Norway in 2015. With all of the hassles of overseas travel these days, I had sort of given up on trans-Atlantic trips, but maybe we will go. My husband’s grandparents came from Norway early in the 20th century.

 

What kinds of places are on your travel bucket list? Do you like tour packages/groups or independent travel?

Amelia Island

 

 

My husband and I spent the first 2 weeks of February on Amelia Island, Florida. We rented a 3 bedroom townhouse thru Home Away. We had hoped some family members would join us, but the two of us enjoyed pursuing our interests in a leisurely manner when they were unable to come. The rental was beautifully decorated and spacious and well-equipped, especially the kitchen. It was less than a 1/4 mile to Peter’s Point beach and a few blocks to many bike paths. The Preserve neighborhood was a pseudo-Mediterranean design. Though the units near us were unoccupied second homes, many had year-round residents. This wasn’t primarily a rental neighborhood.

   

  

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The duplex units had walled courtyards with some screened in. Ours was a quadplex.

 

What is now Amelia Island was claimed by Spain in 1513, but French Huguenots landed and settled 1562-1565. The Spanish massacred these settlers in 1565 to regain control. They called the island Isla de Santa Maria. They lost possession in 1763 to the British in the Treaty of Paris. Georgia’s governor James Oglethorpe in 1735 started calling the island Amelia after a daughter of George II even though Georgia did not have possession. The British formally called it Egmont when they took over in 1763. In 1783, as the Revolutionary War ended, the British were forced to return the island to Spain. British settlers had to pledge allegiance to Spain or leave. On March 17th, 1812 “Patriots of Amelia Island” an independent group of Americans seized control and raised their own flag. The next day they  ceded the island to the United States. However, under protest from Spain, the island returned to Spain. Then in 1817 a Scotsman Sir Gregor MacGregor ran the Spanish off and raised the “Green Cross of Florida”. He was assisted by a man who fought in the Mexican War and who, once MacGregor left, raised the Mexican flag at the fort. The United States stepped in to hold the island in trust for Spain; it became a U.S. territory on July 10, 1821. Subsequently, the Confederate flag flew for awhile. Thus, Amelia Island is known as the Isle of Eight Flags.

Fernandina Beach is the only town on Amelia Island. It takes up the northern and central part. The southern portion has many large resorts including Ritz Carlton and Omni Plantation which are beachside. American Beach near the southern tip was originally a community of cottages owned and rented by black Americans who were segregated out of the predominantly white areas. The town’s golden age was 1870 to 1910 when wealthy Northerners built Victorian homes to get away from harsh winters. When Henry Flagler built a rail line to St. Augustine and other Florida coastal towns, Amelia was bypassed. It had a revival with wood pulp factories which still make containers, particle board, etc. and was a leading shrimping area for many years, but imported shrimp has decimated that industry. With a causeway to the mainland, residents can easily work off the island though. Tourism is now a main draw.

The oldest continuously operated bar in Florida.

 

This house was used in  the Pippi Longstocking movie.

 

U.S. Post Office

 

 

 

At the northside marina.

We walked a greenway trail in Fernandina Beach one morning.

 

I was disappointed when the farmers market at Omni Plantation that advertised shrimp from nearby Mayport would be available cancelled because of forecasted rain. We did go to a different farmers market in town where we bought some local zucchini and artisan bread. We had stopped at the Atlantic Seafood Company at the dock on the Amelia River earlier in our trip and knew they had shrimp. An advantage to buying there was that for a small fee they removed the veins and shells. I also bought a spice packet there to use in cooking the shrimp.

It tasted delicious.

We had a good laugh, too. The spices had turned the cooking water red and cloudy. My husband used tongs to retrieve the shrimp. But he twice decided to check while eating dinner to see if there were some he had missed because they were so good he wanted more. Yep. It was like miraculous shrimp that kept appearing each time he dipped into the pot.

We would highly recommend the Amelia River Cruise. It takes you around to see Fort Clinch, then cruises near Cumberland Island. We saw some dolphins. Cumberland Island is part of Georgia, yet it is a few miles from Amelia Island. On this cruise you see the ruins of Dungeness, a large mansion built by Lucy Carnegie. The Carnegies owned most of the island at one time. She had thorough blood horses brought there which now have multiplied and roam wild. We could see some of them in the distance from the boat, but you don’t really get very close. The day of the cruise was our warmest during our stay with 79 degrees.

 

Fort Clinch

I had thought about going to Saint Augustine, about an hour south, but we had already taken the carriage tour there several years ago, and the rest of the town requires a lot of walking which I was reluctant to do while still recovering from foot surgery. We did, however, go northwest to Okefenokee swamp. We took a 90-minute boat tour. My hubby claims we saw 15 alligators; I didn’t keep count, but often all you saw was a pair of eyes above water level. I was surprised that the large expanses of swamp are called prairies. There are clumps of vegetation throughout, some large enough to support a man, some growing into islands. Okefenokee means trembling earth. All of these clumps are rooted and do tremble in the water. The black water mirrors the vegetation. Lots of birds such as ibis flying overhead.

 

 

My husband spent time biking on Amelia Island while I did several beachcombing outings. I was pleased to find some shells quite different from what we gathered on Hilton Head. My favorite shell from last year was a rosy-lined cockle, the only one of its kind. On Amelia, these cockles were one of the most common shells and 4 or 5 times larger than the Hilton Head specimen. I ended up with some terrific whelk pieces, a whole whelk found by my husband, augers, barnacles, angel wings, and sea pens, most of which I had not seen on Hilton Head. The townhouse we rented had a very nice book about Florida beachcombing which helped me identify my finds. I also found two pieces of sea glass, but no fossilized shark’s teeth which people do hunt. The online picture index I used last year also was helpful.

 

On February 13th, the full moon reflected on the Atlantic ocean was gorgeous. Not to be outdone, the sun gave us a spectacular sunset on February 14th. We ate at Brett’s next to the docks for our Valentine’s lunch (mahi mahi with shrimp) and decided to return to the docks around sunset when the waitress confirmed that there were often lovely sunsets over the Amelia River. We were not disappointed. This was our last evening on Amelia Island and it ended delightfully.

Brett’s where we lunched.

 

About 30 minutes prior to sunset.

Getting lower in the west.

The northside of the docks bathed in the evening light.

 

The perfect ending to our Amelia Island stay.