Through the Driftwood Forest

We decided to do a bit of adventuring this morning and set out for Blackrock Beach in Big Talbot Island State Park up here in Northern Florida.

Once we arrived and Chris was loaded down with all of our necessities he declared himself to be Samwise the Brave....I'll let you decide if he was being dramatic or not.....but I certainly don't think that he looks as if he's packed enough to get himself to Mordor.......

You can tell that we are not professional adventurers by the fact that we forgot to bring both sunscreen and bug spray and we most definitely needed bug spray.  The lovely shaded path we started down was home to approximately eleventy-billion mosquitoes and David was not pleased.   Adventuring lesson number one: mosquito bites + salt water = burning fire legs of death.

I thought the trail ended with a path down to a regular beach.  In reality the trail led to this:

An amazing driftwood forest/tree graveyard.  It was a bit of a scramble to get down to the beach but it was so worth it.  We promptly abandoned our shoes and got down to the business of exploring.

The pictures don't really do justice to the surrealness of this place.  It was wonderful and quiet and pretty much totally abandoned.

We found hermit crabs, regular crabs, and tiny schools of fish.  We also had a bit of a surprise in the shallow water.......

The hammerhead was swimming right by our feet when we noticed him which was amazing.....and also a little frightening......but also solidified this beach's reputation as our most amazing place visited in Florida.  Of course after the shark sighting we were a little more careful with the kids in the water :)

I think we'll definitely be revisiting soon.