It was a beautiful day to gather up my seashells and my friends to dance in the Captiva Holiday Village parade!
Thank you Ron, Phyllis and Ellen for helping me dress up the Junonia Jalopy with Christmas garland, a Christmas tree, red ribbon, shells, shells and more shells.
Our dear friend Sarah from Virginia Beach joined me by the Christmas tree on the back of the Jalopy showing off our tee shirts for our golf cart theme “Seashell Santas”. I wore a tee shirt with a CONE shell with a Santa hat saying “Oh CONE all ye faithful” and Sarah had an OLIVE shell with a Santa hat saying “OLIVE want for Christmas is my feet on the beach!”
Sarah’s husband Don rode in the cart with Clark. They’ve been friends since college!
While we were putting our final finishes on the cart, I was thrilled to meet Jodi and Dave from Texas who told me they found 567 SHARK’S TEETH on Manasota Key last week. Wow!
I met Debbie and Bill from Delaware too! They went to Little Hickory last week to see the thousands of FIGHTING CONCHS I showed you a couple of weeks ago. Those FIGHTING CONCHS are still there… can you believe it? Thanks Debbie and Bill for filling me in on the shelling since I was a little tied up this week.
Oh but wait! You have to see some of the aaaa-dor-able golf carts that stunned and amazed me by having soooo much creativity. Tween Waters won Best In Show with this unbelievable Polar Express. So cute!
Oh I wish I could have gotten a better photo of Captiva Cruises’ rendition of their Lady Chadwick boat because this picture just doesn’t do it justice. It’s a fantastic float!
Since the Lady Chadwick docks at McCarthy’s Marina, they made another float of the marina cottage. Can you believe there is a golf cart in there?
Mr Snowman was paddle boarding on the Yolo Watersports tiki cart!
The Mucky Duck golf cart had a “White Christmas” …but then again, this photo does not do it justice. Lydia hung ice cycles with dripped hot glue with care then glittered their shoes, glasses and every detail imaginable.
Here is American Realty’s Jack Frost In The Box. Wild!
The Captiva Island Yacht Club had a fabulous sailboat golf cart!
The South Seas Island Resort elves were making everybody smile…
And the winner for the non-commercial golf cart went to girls in Send In The Clowns…. again! They won for their pink flamingo cart last year, remember? This year’s cart was just as cute and clever.
They had some great competition with the oh so cute “Fruitful Christmas” girls…
We all had way too much fun making this parade the perfect quirky Captiva Christmas. And thank you iLoveShelling friends for coming out to woop it up with us! I saw lots of aqua iLoveShelling shirts and you too, Michael, so I wish I could have talked to all of you but hopefully I will see you on the beach this week. I need my shelling fix! I’ve been cooped up in my studio painting humongo shells all week while Tammy Mullet found this awesome HORSE CONCH off West Gulf Drive. I’m sure she was doing a wild and crazy happy dance! Congrashellations! Wait for me! I’ll be out there soon!!!
Thanks for sharing such fun photos! Love that huge horse conch – wow!
Thanks for sharing all the great parade pics!!! Love Captiva and the parade sounds just perfect for it.
And oh that horse conch…. Beautiful!!!
Oh look at what fun those pictures show!! LOVE LOVE LOVE your cart all deck out and the others. Too cute and it looks to be sooo much fun!!!
One day I’ll be there to see this cool parade and join all these great festivities! Thanx so much for sharing the pictures. Its so neat to see.
Get back our there and get your shell fix cause we need our fix too!! :D
Looks and sounds like a good time was had by all. Thanks for sharing all the pictures.
Would love to have been there :-)
I am loving all those big shells on your cart this year. You did a fab job with them. Olive I want is my feet at the beach too lol. Cute t shirts you made out of your notecards. Thanks again Pam for all you do. I don’t say it enough anymore.
Sorry to miss that great parade…we did make Sanibel Luminary night…very fun! And didn’t expect to see my picture as I was strolling down…Yes, Pam, I was screaming…I just couldn’t believe it…there were no shells coming in! I couldn’t believe I noticed something mostly buried, a broken hole is actually what I spotted…and dug and when it popped up, I almost had a heart attack!
We even rented a boat from Jensen’s Marina to North Captiva Island to go shelling the day before…it was great shelling there and what a bunch of nice guys at the Marina! Smiles to you and Merry Christmas to you and Clark!
Wow Tam Tam, that is one really enormous shell!!!
Well done! I am sure I would never have spotted it because it was buried.
luvluvluv all those great decorated golf carts! That will be something to see in person – one day!
That horse conch is gor-geous!!! Congrats on that great find, Tammy!!
Pam – we want you out shelling, too, so we can live vicariously through you and your pics!!
Looks like everyone had a blast. I looooved your cart Pam it’s so very you.
I really want to go to next years and who knows maybe Tammy’s horse conch luck will strike again.
Sarasota Cindy
We saw this terrific parade one year. Looks like it was more amazing than ever?
Went beach combing on Jekyll Island (GA) last weekend. The tide was real low and we got to see live knobbed whelks. It’s not Sanibel but beautiful also.
I went out this morning at about 7 am with the lightning still flashing way to the south of here. It was really warm.
There were about 30 or 40 live fighting conchs washed up in one section; I threw them all back into the water. The storm has made a little bit more erosion. Here at West Gulf Drive I think that the beach near the water is sloping a bit too steeply for many of the larger shells to wash all the way up.
There were quite a few pretty calico scallops and rough scallops washed up about a mile to the north of Beach access # 7, but I didn’t see anything else remarkable this morning.
The patches of shell hash that had a lot of micros in are all washed away now, so I’m glad I spent as much time as I did searching them for 3 days. I got a lot of cool micros.
I guess the shells from this storm will start washing up in a day or so…
It’s supposed to be stormy for another day or so I think. Pam where are you shelling today?
Will you/ can you share picues of the minis you found? Or are they just too small to appreciate unless under magnification?
Hi LInda. Most of the micros I found are way too tiny to photograph with my camera and my limited photography skills, plus I don’t have the cable I would need to upload them to this little laptop, and plus I am not on Facebook so I could not post them there. But maybe later I can make a list of some of the things I found with links to the appropriate pages of the Shell Museum website, if that would be helpful?
I would be interested– might persuade me to try the kneepads and magnifying glasses!
OK Linda, I will do that bit by bit. Please feel free to remind me if I forget! :)
You’re braver than I am, Susan! I waited a until a little later for the lightning to pass before I ventured out. I found it too choppy to go out into the water. I had the best luck with some shell piles at the high tide line, but even then, it was a lot of work to find a few very small shells. I was searching about a mile east of the Donax st. access.
There were also a LOT of sea slugs washed up, so if anyone decides to dig with their bare hands through those shell piles, watch out! It’s going to get a bit putrid in there in the next day or so, I would think…..
Pam – the parade was awesome and I was flashing my blue shirt for all to see!! What a hoot that must have been. The whole weekend was great – Luminary on Sanibel so beautiful and what great food!!! Have to do it again – didn’t find any exciting shells this time but that was not the purpose. So get back out there girlfriend and let us know what’s washing up on the beaches!!
This afternoon I went out again. I found a few shells, nothing very spectacular except a nice candy up at high tide level.
But I wished I had had my camera with me because just freshly washed up there was this really amazing large piece of sea pork that was the most beautiful color red you can imagine. It was really pretty in shape too, all over quite beautiful, although that might be hard to imagine!
I was grateful that I read Pam’s blog because at least I knew what it was. There were two other ladies looking at it and they could not work out what the heck it was, and did not know if it was safe to pick up! :)
I’m always threatening to bring one of those home and serve it to my kids as ‘sushi’ LOL!
This one sure would have made pretty red sushi!
I imagine if you tried to eat sea pork it would be pretty gross, probably a really weird texture: both jelly-like and tough at the same time I would think!
I wonder what sea pork tastes like!?! At some point someone must have been crazy enough to try…
This one really looked like something from another world!
From Wikipedia:
Culinary
Various Ascidiacea species (sea squirts[1] or sea pork.[2]) are consumed as food around the world
Sea pineapple (Halocynthia roretzi) is cultivated in Japan (hoya, maboya) and Korea (meongge) and, when eaten raw, has been described by Lonely Planet as tasting like “rubber dipped in ammonia”. The peculiar flavor is attributed to an unsaturated alcohol called cynthiaol.
The Korean fish stew agujjim traditionally contains the tunicate Styela clava.[7] According to the LA Weekly[citation needed], “they are actually farmed in parts of Korea, and sea squirt bibimbap is a specialty of Geojae-do island, not far from Masan.”
Microcosmus sabatieri and several similar species from the Mediterranean Sea are eaten in France (figue de mer, violet), Italy (limone di mare, uova di mare), Greece (fouska, φούσκα). In Greece they are consumed just raw with lemon or in salads with olive oil, lemon and parsley.
The piure (Pyura chilensis) is used as food in the cuisine of Chile, consumed both raw and used as ingredients in seafood stews like bouillabaisse.
Pyura stolonifera is known as cunjevoi in Australia. This was once used as a food source by Aboriginal people living around Botany Bay, but is now used mainly for fishing bait.
As the old saying goes, “Hunger makes the best sauce”
Good grief! Thanks Olga. I think I will pass on trying the sea pork as an entree or as an appetizer!!!
Early AM at # 4, I found my FIRST beautiful and complete flat scallop (round-rib upper valve) – it is big and beautiful and perfect! That was worth the trip up there. At low tide PM at lighthouse, not much – no wentletraps…..pooooh….. lots of dolphins and pelicans feeding….beautiful nontheless. Only 6 days left…..can’t stand the thoughts of leaving.
Johnnie, what do you mean by “round-rib”? You mean you found the one in this post …. http://www.iloveshelling.com/blog/2012/09/27/its-a-flat-out-scallop-valve/ ? You found the right valve of the flat??? I get excited every time I find a flat …. But to find the other side is awesome! Lemme know please!
Usually when people say the “upper valve” they mean the flat valve, because it’s carried uppermost in life. And I think when Johnnie said “round-rib”, that means that the ribs on the shell are round when you look at the very edge of the shell, not flat-topped ribs. If they are round ribs that should means it’s the upper valve of the round-ribbed scallop not the zigzag scallop.
But I am a bit confused as to which one lives here, or maybe they both do? I need to look at the material they have upstairs in teh research part of the museum.
Pam, it was great to finally meet you. Your golf cart looked awesome. We flew back to Delaware tonight, where the temperature was a balmy 42, :0( We miss Sanibel already!
We arrive on the 19th for 2 1/2 glorious weeks. Looks like we should plan to come earlier next year. What fun! Your shell “float” was number one for me!!! Beautiful!
Congrats, Johnnie! How early were you out there?
Just returned home from my first ever visit to Sanibel. For my last morning, and the lowest tide during the trip, I walked the beach starting around 6 am. It was the most interesting walk of my vacation, made even more beautiful by lightning flashes in the distance.
First I came across about 50 Sea Slugs. Is that their real name? I have no idea, but it sure fits. Not long after, I found 15 perfect Fig Shells. Soon followed by a sandbar that was covered with over 100 Fighting Conch, evenly spaced.
Then my fantasy came true…Coquina Mountain. I could have spent the whole day sitting there picking up pairs. While I was filling my pail, the tide had come in and covered the Sea Slugs and the Fighting Conchs. Just wanted to share some of my shell joy with folks that would understand my thrill and amazement at the bounty on the beach.
Thank you for sharing…. what fun you had!
Which beach were you on?
Susan,
I am so sorry! Didn’t see your reply to me until this very minute!! It’s New Years Eve!!!
I’m still so new at all this. I don’t even know the name of the beach I was on, but I can describe it and you will know…
I was staying at Ocean’s Reach, walked out of the place and turned “Left” toward the Light House. All the excitement came up pretty quickly and in sequence.
But once I hit Coquina Mountain, it was like hitting heaven. Couldn’t move away I was so happy. The punch line is coming though, cause I completely lost track of time and missed my plane home. Oops.
That was not a fun drive to the Airport but…I wouldn’t wish it any other way. I’m still reliving my happy memories of those low tide surprises and all those multi colored little butterflys
Sorry again. I wanted to address my reply Janet.
Ooooohhhhh, I love to hear your shell find stories! Since I havent been able to get to the beach as much as usual the past week, it’s so nice to hear what was happening and what shelling I missed. Now I know how yall feel when you cant be here- Its almost painful.
And Olga, that is hilarious! Now we can fix sea pork after we get a little hungry while out shelling all day- LOL
Susan, I want to see your micros too!!!!
The micros will be happy to see you too Pam! I will show you the really nice rock shell I found this morning too. Just as soon as you have the time.
I went out this morning as soon as it was nearly light. It was still low tide but coming in. The rough seas and the big high tide had swept across the beach more than I had expected. It had reworked all the shells that were on the beach and added some more, but not really the big pretty kinds that everyone loves.
I did find a live flame box crab, which was really amazing to see and I took a lot of pictures of it.
The best shell I found was a nice rock shell, is that what you call it? A young one very pretty.