Over Labor Day weekend, we helped Justin and Camden move into their dorm rooms down in Florida. With the reality of them being gone until Christmas heavy on my heart, believe it or not, Michael had to talk me into going to the beach. Did you hear what I just said? I am a beach person. One of my favorite places in the world is the white sandy beaches of Fort Pickens, and he had to talk me into going!! Gavin said, “I want to come, but I’ll just be a ‘third wheel’!” (If you’ve never seen our favorite comedian Tim Hawkins’ song about the “Third Wheel”, go here. This is a must see—so funny). It will take a little while for Gavin to adjust to his new role of only child, but I assured him that we were the three musketeers instead—all for one and one for all!
One of the cool things about hiking your favorite places over and over is that they change with the seasons. At Fort Pickens, I take the same route every time (to see a map of my exact route click here); but it is different each time I go. This time was no exception. Because of the recent hurricane that had gone through the Gulf of Mexico, not hitting Pensacola, but still causing a storm surge to hit the beaches, we saw some things we had never seen before.
The storm surge had brought with it a lot of seaweed that had come ashore in various places. It was so thick in one spot before we rounded the point that as the waves came in, they just oozed in. Because a lot of birds were walking around on the oozing seaweed, we took a closer look. All over the surface of the seaweed were what I am assuming were sea cucumbers. Hundreds of bumpy slug-like creatures. I am assuming that I would not have enjoyed my usual hike later that week because I can only imagine what it would have smelled like, but for now, they were fascinating.
As we walked along, we saw that outside of the crab holes in the sand were lots of coquina clam shell pieces, but we couldn’t find any crabs. Then we noticed that as the waves went out, they uncovered hundreds of coquina clams that immediately buried themselves in the sand again. That’s when we figured out where the crabs were. In the water. Feasting. We started seeing crabs all along the edge of the water. Then we saw a sting ray. We decided that maybe it wasn’t the best day to do too much wading although we did go out on a couple of fresh sandbars that when you walked on them, you sank up to your knees in the fresh sand. It was like walking in deep snow.

Next we noticed that as the waves went out swarms of sand fleas (also known as mole crabs) went out with them. These harmless creatures are very popular as bait and they were very popular on the beach this day as well. There were more shore birds than usual and they were all sitting on the shore. It looked like they were hoping we wouldn’t walk close enough that they had to move. They must have been so full. They had been at this “all you can eat buffet” for quite awhile.
We had so much fun. We caught coquina clams, sand fleas, and a crab and enjoyed watching them all scurry back to hide in the sand. We looked at jellyfish that had washed ashore, without touching of course.

As we were heading back toward our car as the sun was starting to set, we saw something that I had never seen before. Young blue herons. Not babies anymore. Just starting to stretch their wings and fly a little. Their mom close by watching over them still. Three of them. And as I pictured my three boys beginning to stretch their wings and leave the nest, I knew that I wouldn’t want it any other way. I am proud of the men they have become.

Randi