Pix Pages Two: More Vacation

Dolphins are an integral part of our vacations in South Carolina. These two kept me occupied far too long and I have numerous pictures of the mama teaching the kid to fish. These pics are taken from my favorite part of the beach: the breach between our island and the island next to us. It's a sure thing to see dolphins here at any time of the day. There are also sharks. This is why I never swim across to the other island, although apparently this year my dad did it and he came out unscathed. I suppose that is some sort of lesson to me. When we're lucky the dolphins come and swim near us at the beach. I know it's probably not healthy for them to get as close to us as they have been in the past, but I love it. They get so close they look you in the eye. I love to hear their breath. I talked to this dolphin a lot in my head, telling her I had a baby too. I know. Geekness again.

Every spring oodles of loggerhead turtles head up on the beach, dig nests and deposit their eggs. This is something I would like to see, but we never get there in the spring. Sometimes, however, it ends up that we can see when the nests hatch. This is a nest that the turtle patrol was digging out because the tide had come so high, it was being washed away. They dug out the eggs and then dug a new nest for them further up the beach. You cannot tell her, but the eggs look a lot like ping pong balls. In this nest, there weren't only eggs though:

These turtles were apparently hatching too soon! I wish I had put my hand there so you could see the perspective. But they were about the size of my palm, maybe a little bigger than that, but not much. And these are loggerheads! They grow to 300 pounds! (I, of course, wanted to post more pictures of this, but blogger is fucking around with me again.) The "turtle patrol" noted that there was still yolk on the turtles, which meant they weren't ready to swim out to see yet. The hatched turtles went right back into the new nest with the eggs. I hope they are alright. Apparently the ghost crabs will eat the eggs, so when the turtle patrol marks the nest, they put a tube of PVC piping next to the nest with some lunch meat in it. This diverts the creepy ghost crabs and voila, turtles live!

I spent a lot of time at the beach (when not reading) thinking about how our lives were going to change so much so soon. I know I have no clue as the extent of this, but we're trying to be realistic. For example, we love to get to the beach early and just camp out there all day. We realized that if we planned to be at the beach next August, it would be drastically different. You just can't be at the 98 degree beach all day with a six month old. We want one of this little pop-up beach cabana things, but the fact of the matter is, it's just too damn hot to be outside all day with a baby like that. And then when the kid gets older, we won't be exactly napping and reading at the beach all day. I watched families who were at the beach with their young kids. They schlep down a ton of shit, are there for an hour and a half, and then schlep all shit back up the boardwalk. To say we relished this vacation is an understatement. I know we're starting a new phase of life that is totally exciting, it's just all going to be so different. So, so different.