Turtle Watching

This summer I have had the pleasure of being a Turtle Volunteer. We live on St. George Island; a barrier island off the coast of Apalachicola. The island is a nesting place for several kinds of sea turtles. When sea turtles are ready to lay eggs they return to their own birthplace.

In May, we start checking the beach each morning at sunrise for turtle tracks. The tracks often lead to a distrubed area of sand. Volunteers dig in the sand to see if there are eggs. If we find eggs we put the sand back and mark the area to keep beachgoers from distrubing the nest. After about 55 days the eggs hatch and lots of baby turtles make their way to the ocean.

This was my first summer to be a volunteer. It was very interesting and educational. I found several nests, but this summer's hurricanes washed several of them away.

A couple of weeks ago, one of "my" nests hatched! The baby turtles leave the nest in the middle of the night so I didn't get to see them. But a few days after the nest has hatched we evaluated it. We found 106 hatched eggs and 10 eggs that did not mature. We only found one dead baby turtle, so hopefully 105 little turtles made it to the water.

If you vacation on a gulf beach you can help the turtles. Please do not leave chairs, towels, sand toys, etc. on the beach over night. The turtles can get caught in them and may not be able to get back to the water. If you dig holes on the beach, fill them in before you leave so turtles won't fall into them. And keep beach front lights off at night, the mother turtles and the baby turtles get disoriented by the light and may crawl toward the light instead of the water.

Hurricane Dennis

We were very lucky not to be hit by hurricane Katrina. However in early July we did have a visit from Dennis. My husband and I decided to stay in our house on a barrier island. We really never did hear that there was a mandatory evacuation. We watched the Weather Channel, checked the NOAA hurricane web site and the national data buoy web site before and during the storm. The wind was not bad and there was little damage in our area from the wind. The storm surge was bad! It brought several feet of sand to many of the roads on our island. It destroyed businesses and homes on the bay and ripped up many beachwalks.

The above photo is not a stream, but our flooded street.



This photo shows the water coming up our driveway. It did eventually get into our house. We were able to move everything up and out of the way.

Road Trip

On March 1, 2005 David and I left the Florida panhandle for a one month road trip. We drove along I-10 to California, up to Napa Valley, and back across I-80, through Illinios and then headed back to Florida.

Here are some of the photos we took:


On March 6 we drove from Houston, TX to Las Cruces, NM. A LONG drive, the scenery was mostly barren and brown. But along parts of the highway there was a carpet of yellow flowers.



On March 7 we visited the City of Rocks State Park in New Mexico.


We visited David's aunt and uncle in La Quinta, CA. This is a picture of the PGA West Clubhouse. The desert was in full bloom and very beautiful.



We arrived in Monterey, CA on March 10. We met some Kentucky friends for a few days of golfing, shopping and eating. We spent 2 nights at The Jabberwock Bed and Breakfast. This picture shows the entrance to the Jabberwock. The B&B was fun, great back porch for visiting.


We spent two days at Spanish Bay for more golfing, shopping and eating! We took one last drive around 17 Mile Drive and took this photo of the lone cypress.

Red Tide

The eastern Florida panhandle escaped the wrath of Katrina but we are being "attacked" by a red tide. The red tide has killed many fish and the beaches are not a very pretty sight right now.