beluga

beluga

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Busy

Yesterday we both had busy days.   Fun days.   Dave and John played golf (their usual Wednesday activity) and I drove in to St. Armands Circle and walked miles and miles in and out of practically every store all the way around the circle.    Feel sorry for me?    I didn't buy much, I promise.

the loading of the clubs

John picks Dave up for their golf game so I can have the car.   Isn't he nice?

Today we packed a lunch and decided to head to the beach.   It was sunny and warm, but there was quite a stiff breeze blowing.     The bad thing about this area is the near constant traffic going to the beach during February and March.    The good thing about this area is that there are great beaches in a number of directions, so we let the line of cars tell us which way not to go.
We ended up just in front of the house that JoAnn rented in February.   Easy drive over and a perfect parking spot just behind the dunes.

 It was a busy beach today.   Not so busy in terms of other sunbathers, but busy with machines.  Sometimes its nice to be totally alone, just you, the sand and the water.   Sometimes its nice to have something to watch.   Today was one of those days.

lunch?

Great Lakes Dredge Co. has finished its beach replenishment on Anna Maria Island and today we watched them gather long rusty lengths of pipe, couple them together, push them out into the gulf where a waiting tug caught the lengths and towed them out to a waiting barge.    After about 3 hours the crew had floated, towed and attached the remaining three sections (each easily 500 feet long) to the barge.   The big tug then moved in front of the whole parade and slowly pulled it away until we could no longer see it.   I wonder where it was taking everything?

  The workers removed the caution fencing on the beach, smoothed the sand out until no loader tracks remained and it became a wide beautiful stretch of white sand once again.

What a beautiful tug!
Its home base is New Orleans
nosy beachgoer

can you see Dave ogling the huge Tonka toys?

a  front end loader with a pipe picker upper on front pushes the long pipe sections toward the waiting tug
just a few more feet.
this smaller tug is from Texas

got it!

big tug and little tug escort this pipe section to the others waiting at the barge

4 comments:

  1. What an interesting diversion at the beach! Fun! Thanks for sharing.

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  2. Always warms me up to read your posts each day....Sun, sand, blue sky and shorts. Love it.

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  3. Glad you had some excitement at the beach:)

    The wind certainly did bring down the temps for sure. We walked over to the new Tidal Table Restaurant with our friends for a late lunch and almost froze when the wind picked up.

    Sounds like a fun day with alone time on Wed.

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  4. Tonka toys indeed! Sand and water and pic-up-sticks to play with all day under beautiful blue skies - what a fun job. I'm sure there are yucky ones as well during hurricane season, but you really captured them on a good day. Anyone arriving the next morning to the smooth sand and open sea will never know all the excitement they missed. Thanks for taking us along.

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