Seal Harbor

Today, We had our first excursion to the ocean this season. The coast is one of my favorite places ever, and I always beg to go. I even wanted to go last weekend in the rain =0). We went today and I'm already planning my next trip ASAP. We took the kids to Seal Harbor, on Mount Dessert Island. Brad spent a lot of summers there as a kid doing just what we did today. . . looking for sea creatures in the tidal pools. When we arrived, the tide was out the furthest either of us have ever seen it. We walked and walked, searching, and all we found were shells. Just as we walked back to our car, a woman came over to us to say that if we just walked a bit further, there were hundreds of sand dollars on the shore line. Sure enough, we walked where she directed, and found the sand covered in sand dollars! There were so many that Liv had a hard time walking without stepping on them. We also found sea urchins, 2 dead crabs, barnacles, snails, 1 hermit crab, more crab legs, clams, clam shells, and lots of green sea weed. I don't know who had the most fun, Brad and I were right there excitedly searching for creatures.

I also included a picture of my feet standing on a rocky part of the beach. One of my quirks is that I love rocks, and I always want to take them home with me. I told BR that I was using all of my self control to not take some of these rocks home with me (since I learned it is illegal to remove them from a National Park). He informed me that taking home rocks had never crossed his mind, and I realized not everyone has that urge. Seriously, I see them and I want them.

Labels for some of the pictures above: The rock BR is holding with the big squiggly thing attached is seaweed, the thing that looks like a grassy pebble is a sea urchin, the picture of the girls is of them holding the frisbee they were using to hold all of our finds, and after our family pictures is one of the sand dollars covering the sand.