No Swimming at the Beach

We've seen the signs letting us know that we couldn't swim at the RV park beach, but until today we had yet to investigate why.  Always before when we visited here we have been able to use this beach behind the RV park for swimming. The last time we were here it was shortly after the BP spill and there were crews cleaning up oil in the water and the sand.  We figured that by now it would be nice again. Roger even dug down into the sand today to see if he could find any oil, but it was clean.  The beach itself is beautiful and clean with scattered seaweed and some shells. But there is not as much as in the past.  No crab carcasses, no fish bones, and not many signs of critters anywhere that you would expect to see. You would be hard pressed to find pretty shells - one of the reasons for walking along the beach on a beautiful day.  

No gulls looking for a meal but there was one lonely sandpiper this afternoon. We don't know how much sea grass there should be this time of year, but there isn't any.  It is quite sad. We will have to ask Andy about it and do some research as to what is going on.  It is very disappointing as we had hoped for a beach day with the grandkids.  We still can, but will have to limit ourselves to kite flying and building sand castles - that's fun but the kids like to swim!

It's the water that makes it unsuitable for swimming and maybe even for sea life, thus the reason for no shells or remains.   It's brown!  Really! Brown.  For about 25-30 yards out into the water it is an ugly brown color.  From that point it is normal looking, but then about 150 yards out there is another current of brown water. Really weird.  We had noticed it on our walk yesterday but there was a drainage ditch that looked to carry run off from the storm.  We assumed that that particular area's water was stained by tannins from the runoff.  Now we aren't so sure that is the cause. We can only hope it's not petroleum products because they will last a very, very long time.   

We did have a nice dinner with the family last night and made some plans for the weekend.  It looks like we will be up early tomorrow for a soccer game, come back here for lunch, then off to the zoo.  Except for the early morning game, sounds fun to us :-)  

Maggie dictated our walk this morning.  We got 20 minutes out and she just sat her little back end down.  We got her moving again, but maybe 10 steps more and she plunked herself down facing the way we came.  Little stinker.  She was ready to go home and wasn't going a step further.  She pulled it again tonight on our after dinner stroll.  When she was ready to return, she was ready.  

It was a beautiful day - cloudy off and on but in the low 70s with low humidity.  Another storm coming on Monday so we are enjoying the good weather while we have it.