Last night at the beach...

Well, we decided to take a very unplanned drive last night. Just down to the beach. It's probably our favorite place to go down here, always very calming and serene. If it weren't for the brutal sun, I'd probably be down here alllll the time.

It was a breezy night. We parked on the street just by the stairs going down. I coiled up my hair and stuck it inside my shirt. We walked across the sand going down towards the water. I was getting a bit tired -- where was he going to? Any place to sit down and listen to the waves would be fine with me.

We passed a few couples and kept walking down in silence. He flashed the dim blue light on his key chain annoyingly at an unknown object in the distance. What are you looking for I thought? An unauthorized piece of driftwood? As we approached I could see the object of his interest: a *huge* turtle crawling up on the sand!

The turtle stopped at that point hesitatingly. We immediately backed off and sat down to watch one of nature's rare moments. All of a sudden, someone in the distance set off some leftover fireworks from the 4th of July. That's all it took for our huge turtle friend to turn tail and retreat back to the safety of the water.

It was a once in a lifetime experience to see something unexpected like this. My only hope is that this kind of thing continues to happen on the shores of Florida (and beyond) given all the development man has continued to impose on the environment.