why i love miami

I had this idea last Friday night that I wanted to go and watch the sun rise on Saturday morning. Well actually, I mentioned wanting to go watch the sun set on the beach with a picnic, and Kevin reminded me that we are on the wrong coast for that, hahaha. So, we opted to wake up at 5:30 to get to the beach on time for the sunrise. We were heading to Hollywood beach, which is North of us, but it seemed to be getting lighter and we were worried we were gonna miss it, so we just took the next exit and headed toward the beach. We ended up at Hallandale beach, which was beautiful. It was a little cloudy, but the weather was perfect and I absolutely loved watching the sun come out for the day. There was something very relaxing and calming about the whole experience.


While we were sitting on the beach, a lady on a four wheeler stopped by a little roped-off section of the beach that we happen to be sitting near. I had no idea what she was doing, but she put on some gloves and began digging in the sand. After several minutes of digging deeper, she came up with a handful of turtle eggs. I felt like a little kid as I watched in awe as she brought out handfuls of eggs. Occasionally she would bring out broken shells, or throw something into a bucket. My dad would have been so proud because I went over and started talking to her. I was curious how they knew the turtle nest was there, and she said that it had actually hatched out the night before. They are trained to look for the tracks, etc. So, they rope off the area and dig it up the next day.

I learned a lot about turtles in the 5 minutes I talked with her. Apparently turtles can lay up to 95 eggs at one time. That is a lot of eggs!! They only have to incubate for about 45 days before they hatch out. She had 3 little baby turtles in her bucket that didn't crawl out of the nest because turtles can dig down anywhere from 3 to 7 feet when they lay their eggs. The rest of the eggs were never fully developed, thus wouldn't be hatching. It was kind of gross because she had to open each egg to make sure there wasn't any developement.

She offered to let me go down to the water with her while she released the turtles. They were just about the cutest thing you have ever seen. I tried to take a little video, but once the wave comes, it is a mystery where the turtle went, hahaha. Good luck little guy :)