Posted in: Animal Sightings, Exploring Virginia, Sightseeing

Virginia Beach, Virginia

We paid our crazy toll to once again cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel to visit Virginia Beach. It was too cold to go swimming, but we wanted to see it.

We walked along the beach, which had a very large section of sand before we got to the water. I’m not sure if it is always that wide, or if we hit low tide. The sand was like play sand, very smooth and fine. There was a cool Neptune statue by the beach, a playground, and on street parking (pay parking).

We saw plenty of sea birds flying around and little holes where crabs or clams might have dug into the sand. We did not see a lot of shells though. We did see a lot of horseshoe crab shells along the beach. I’m hoping that they were molts (found out that horseshoe crabs grow by molting their old shells) and not deceased crabs.

We saw a weird spinal cord looking thing, that we looked up and discovered it was a whelk egg case. Whelks look like conch shells, but like colder waters and are carnivores (conchs are herbivores). Who knew?

We didn’t stay too long, as the wind was strong and it was pretty chilly, but it was nice to see.

Posted in: Animal Sightings, Exploring South Carolina, Sightseeing

Myrtle Beach: Visiting the beach

We were lucky enough to be able to walk to the beach from the campground. It was only about a half mile to the beach. The state park did a nice job with walkways to the beach, outdoor showers, and informational signs along the paths. There was even a QR code to scan to check local beach information (tides, etc.).

I took the boys to the beach on Sunday for some fun in the sun. The water was still a little chilly and there was a red flag out, so we kept to wading in the water near the shore. If there wasn’t the flag, I think they would have gone swimming though! The boys made another fort and Nick made a sand penguin to go inside it. They didn’t do too bad of a job considering they didn’t have a bucket or any tools.

When it was low tide we went for a walk along the beach looking for shells. We found a few neat ones. I found a shark tooth as well! I didn’t know beforehand, but Myrtle Beach is known for having shark teeth wash up on shore. The teeth are fossilized and have a dark grey or black color due to the minerals absorbed during fossilization. Nick and I had fun searching the beach. The teeth can be small, so we would crouch down to search through shell piles.

Later in the week, we saw a jellyfish close to the shore, but didn’t get too close to it. We found a couple of starfish and small crabs too. By the end of the week we found 3 crabs, 1 live starfish, 1 dried out starfish, several clams, 1 jellyfish, and 6 shark teeth.

Ben and I even took a night time walk on the beach. It was amazing to be within a quick walk to the ocean.

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