{"id":3607,"date":"2011-09-09T11:57:10","date_gmt":"2011-09-09T15:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meridithdesmondphoto.com\/blog\/?p=3607"},"modified":"2011-09-09T11:57:10","modified_gmt":"2011-09-09T15:57:10","slug":"collecting-shells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meridithdesmondphoto.com\/blog\/collecting-shells\/","title":{"rendered":"Collecting Shells"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Monday after Hurricane Irene hit us here we took a road trip “down the shore” as people from North Jersey say.\u00a0 Monday’s are our day off to be with each other.\u00a0 Chris and I (and my sister) all work weekends so Monday is our day.\u00a0 To spend time doing things or not doing things but just being with each other.\u00a0 Mike(my sisters husband) had a bunch of Monday’s off in the summer and we had planned for the 2nd year in a row to take a day trip to LBI at the end of August.\u00a0 Last year it rained.\u00a0 Then this year the hurricane came and we couldn’t go in the water that Monday so instead we got in the car and drove.\u00a0 Road trip.\u00a0 The sun was shining, the ipod was on and we drove down along the coast not really knowing where we would end up.<\/p>\n

The first stop was the free beach at Monmouth Beach- up and over the sea wall.\u00a0 Broken pieces of steps and railings and lots of sand in the roads.\u00a0 There must have been millions of shells on this beach that day.\u00a0 I can remember as a girl my sister and I would walk up and down the beach for hours looking for shells and sea glass- I still have a jar filed with seaglass in my bookshelf.\u00a0 One time we convinced my mom to let us bring home star fish in buckets(how we convinced her I don’t know!)\u00a0 We wanted to dry them out and save them forever.\u00a0 Well a few too many hours in a bucket in our driveway and they turned to mush, not to mention how bad they smelled.\u00a0 We had to dump them down the sewer in the street- which now that I think of it probably wasn’t the best idea.\u00a0 SO we weren’t allowed to bring home any more sea creatures, but shells were OK.\u00a0 I even had reference books so I could look up the shells- OK so I was a little weird as a kid, but who isn’t?\u00a0 I also wanted a metal detector so I could find things in the sand- I don’t know why I never got one?\u00a0 There were a few people out on the beach with them this day.\u00a0 As time went by and I grew older and I still had a passion for the beach I thought I wanted to become a Marine Biologist, that is until I had to dissect something in marine biology class in high school.\u00a0 Scratch that idea!\u00a0 To this day I could walk along the shoreline for hours looking down at the sand trying to find those hidden treasures nestled in the sand.<\/p>\n

These photos on the beach were taken with my phone.\u00a0 Not sure why I didn’t bring my “real” camera.\u00a0 Luckily camera phones these days are pretty good for outdoor shooting.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"Then we were getting hungry and wanted Windmill<\/a> hotdogs- drove past 2 of them in Long Branch that were closed because they had no power and ended up at the one near the entrance of Ocean Grove.\u00a0 Then we headed to Asbury Park and sat on the boardwalk to digest.\u00a0 The beach was pretty empty since you weren’t allowed into the water and they were still charging people to sit on the beach.
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Off to a secret spot in Deal- there were tons of surfers here.\u00a0 We had to climb down those rocks to get to the beach.<\/p>\n

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I was zoomed in for this next shot with my phone so the image quality is very grainy- but I like how it looks painterly.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And this is what I collected that day.\u00a0 Not too much sea glass- which made me sad.\u00a0 We even found some pieces of real glass not yet worn down by the tumbling in the sea- yikes!<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

But we found 7 sand dollars!\u00a0 This is a treat- you can never find whole ones like this up here- you have to go more south to the Carolinas or Florida.<\/p>\n

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It amazes me how the ocean surge torn up peoples homes but these shells are whole and unharmed.\u00a0 Crazy huh?<\/p>\n

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Happy Friday- enjoy the weekend everyone!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Monday after Hurricane Irene hit us here we took a road trip “down the shore” as people from North Jersey say.\u00a0 Monday’s are our day off to be with each other.\u00a0 Chris and I (and my sister) all work weekends so Monday is our day.\u00a0 To spend time doing things or not doing things […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personal","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meridithdesmondphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meridithdesmondphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meridithdesmondphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meridithdesmondphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meridithdesmondphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3607"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.meridithdesmondphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3634,"href":"https:\/\/www.meridithdesmondphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3607\/revisions\/3634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meridithdesmondphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meridithdesmondphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meridithdesmondphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meridithdesmondphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}