Sunday morning at the beach

This morning I wanted to take Noah down to the beach to look for shells... it's one of his favorite things to do and he was jealous the other day when I drove off for Sherwood Island while he had to go to work.

We arrived at the parking kiosk at about 8:30... a long line of cars in front and behind us. When we pulled up to the attendant, she says "Out of state? That'll be $22." ????!!!!

We drove away without going to that beach.

Instead we drove over to Compo Beach... where they were charging a whopping $40 for a day pass! We sweet talked the attendant into letting us park in the overflow for an hour or 2 since we're new to the area and just wanted to look around. How long do you think that will work?

Compo beach was really nice. There were lots of cool shells that we'll have to identify somehow. And... there were horseshoe crabs.



At first the HCs we saw were upside down and appeared dead. Noah tapped one with his toe and we discovered that they were in fact alive and stranded by the low tide. So what do we do? We flip them over and begin the great Horseshoe Crab races!



My crab was the unofficial winner...



After a little while of flipping HCs over with our toes and watching them scoot back down to the water, this lady comes along:







Lesson learned...