We had been to Disneyworld and were spending a few days with our close friends Mike and Cheryl Kvalvik in Tallahassee. One day we wanted to go to a beach and it didn't matter much what one. It was pretty cold that week but we managed to pick a nice day. Nice enough for the beach anyway.
The two families packed up and we put in the coordinates of the beach they had chosen into the GPS and off we went. It was a fun drive actually. We drove through the small little beach towns and saw dozens of handpainted wooden signs advertising boiled peanuts in front of ramshackle buildings that weren't open for business sitting cheek by jowl with quaint and freshly coiffed seafood restaurants with white painted covered decks and gabled roofs.
The GPS merrily took us on our drive and drove us directly, not to the beach we had intended, but to a deserted-for-the-season private beach with about 7 or 8 closed up houses and an empty stretch of sugary sand with thousands of seashells waiting politely for us to pick them up.
We piled out and the kids started doing beachy things. Was a teensy bit cold for water play but that didn't stop anyone.
About 10 minutes after we got there someone noticed a dolphin just offshore. In a minute or two we saw a mother and baby swimming in tandem, and then another one. It was hard to tell how many there were all together but my guess is 8 or 10 of them. They swam closer and closer to us and one of them (this is hard to describe) seemed especially curious about us and flipped himself sideways up as close to the beach as he could get without getting stranded. We watched them for quite a while. They were clearly wanting to investigate us.
At one point the teenage girls all went waist deep wading and one of the dolphins came close enough to touch. It scared them just a little and none of them actually reached out to touch but they could have. Pete got some not-so-great video of some of the best parts that I will try to add here too if possible.
As we played in the sand and gathered shells the dolphins kept watch. They would swim closer and further out and then back again, always staying close. As it got toward sunset we started to gather our things and head for home.
It was so beautiful and such an amazing treat for us all. It felt like we had stumbled by accident into a planned private blessing and is a memory that we all treasure.
How fun!! What a fun and memorable vacation!!!
ReplyDeleteWhat fun! We saw dolphins in nature for the first time during our trip to FL last year and it was do neat. What you saw sounds amazing. What a special treat and gift from God.
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