SANIBEL, SIESTA, & SEARCHING IN SARASOTA - Dec. 4, 2004.


Sea grapes. I saw them all over the place in the Bahamas
and finally managed to grab a photo of them on Sanibel
Island. Just because I love them. Yet another tropical
I can't grow in Wisconsin. *sigh*


Turner Beach on Sanibel Island. While hurricanes make
for better shelling, they also decapitate palm trees,
as you can see on the right.


Looking through the shallow water, what would be sand
elsewhere is a couple inches deep of pure shells here.


Scooping up handfuls and picking through them was the
easiest way to find the best small shells.


Some of the shells I collected on Sanibel Island.


This was the most interesting hurricane damage we saw.
That's one of those supertall interstate light poles
just folded over onto the ground. We saw many of these
in this area, which was near Punta Gorda -- right where
Hurricane Charley came ashore a few months prior.


Siesta Beach on Siesta Key has the whitest and finest
sand in the world (it's 99% quartz).


Not very crowded on this day, as you can see. Which, of
course, gave me a nice opportunity to (ahem) "collect"
some of this sand as well, just as I did with the
Bahamian sand. Yes, I'm still weird.


And we'll conclude with a picture of the disc golf
course in Sarasota that ate my Pasadena disc. It is
obviously an evil, evil course.