Rich and I celebrated our anniversary with a trip to the beach. Our goal was to see nesting Loggerhead and/or Green Sea Turtles. We headed to the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge, a 20-mile stretch of beach where thousands of turtles nest each year. Turtles nest at night, but sometimes you can see them in the late evenings and early mornings. And sometimes you strike out and just enjoy a nice walk on the beach with your hubby!

On our evening walk, we hoped to see turtles in the surf. They sometimes wait in the shallow parts until nightfall. We found lots of tracks, but no turtles.

The next morning, we were at the beach about half an hour before sunrise. We searched the dunes for mother turtles that might still be laying their eggs. Alas, all we found were the tracks of the turtles that had nested during the night.

There were an unusual (to us at least) number of false crawls that morning. False crawls are the tracks left by turtles that come onshore, then decide to circle back to the ocean without nesting.

When there are no turtles, I take more landscape photos than usual. I liked the yellow beach sunflowers growing up in the dunes. The only thing that would have made them more photogenic would have been a turtle… ;-)

Rich and I decided that we’ll be back!