The first thing that greets you upon exiting your vehicle is that unmistakable smell of the ocean, salty, somehow a bit sandy. It's funny how a familiar smell can take you right back to a specific memory-even one from many years ago. I love that smell-I wish I could bottle it up so that I could take it out whenever I wanted to visit those memories.
Watching Gulls is high on the list of entertainment while taking in the sights and sounds of the ocean.
Such a beautiful place-serene, yet an awesome reminder of natures power.
Man of Wars were far to abundant for our comfort-we never got in the ocean on this day-these will ruin your day fast.
Just a sampling of the abundant creatures that were washing ashore at a steady pace on one of the days we were there.Pictured above are the Man of War the very obvious blue creature in the front(check out that heap of tentacles up under that guy), the baby Man of War is on the left and just behind the large Man of War is a Sea Nettle.
South Padre is just right down the road(from Corpus Christi)-South Padre Island Drive to be exact, so we spent a bit of them there (seeing as how we are so land locked here in Lubbock-the beach is a definite must when we are down this way.)
I'm always struck by how the smell of the ocean can take me right back to being 3 and 4 years old playing along the shores of the California coast. That salty,sandy aroma is unmistakable and one I wish I could bottle up strictly for visiting memory lane.
Just a few days before we were there Mexico experienced tropical storms + it was only days after the Super Moon, we think this may have contributed to the abundance of sea life washed up on the shore and lurking in the surf.
We always like for our trips to be an educational opportunity for our daughter as well, so we set out to learn a bit about the creatures we were amongst. We learned they were mainly Moon Jellies, Sea Nettles and Man of Wars. Did you know that Man of Wars are also called "blue bottles?" Note the baby Man of War to the left-doesn't it look just like a blue bottle? I've always thought that Man of Wars were jelly fish-the fact is they are not. Man of Wars are actually a conglomerate of 4 different organisms that create a symbiotic creature-each one serves an important function and one can not survive without the others.
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