Boca Grande - finding shells at Gasparilla State Park. What is the deal with the 2 lighthouses?

Hello beach friends! We are hitting the road again. I'm hoping to increase my luck and I traveled north this time up to Boca Grande. We are going to do some shelling, we are going to do some snorkeling, and we're going to drive through lovely Boca Grande. It is an adorable little town and we're also going to talk about two different lighthouses that they have here, which was very confusing to me, but I'm going to go ahead and set the record straight so you know what's what. So let's go to the beach. Here we are at Gasparilla Island State Park. I'm here bright and early. Those are definite potholes that you see there, so just keep that in mind when you drive up here. The parking lot was kind of rough. It does cost three dollars per vehicle. It's an honor system, you kind of stuff your money into a little box, and there are facilities here. And that is the view. Going back to the fee, if you don't have exact change, I don't know what you would do. I happen to have two singles and four quarters, so I managed to pay the three dollars, but if I had had only a five, I guess I would have been paying five dollars to get in. So bring exact change if you come. It's a short walk down to the water, and this is my favorite part, when I get down here and I see what we're going to find. There's almost nobody else here. Let's see what we're going to see in the water. It looks nice and clear. I see some things rolling around in there. So far so good. Let's take a closer look and see what we find. All right, I'm going to start off with a couple of scallops. All right, no surprise, those calico scallops are pretty easy to find. Looks like they have them here. Got the pink variety, got this purple guy. Kind of cool. There's definitely shells there, and it's not so bad. Oh, calico clam. So that surf isn't so bad. It's one of those days that if you find it and you have patience, you probably can definitely pick it out of the water. Looks like I found a turkey wing and another calico clam. It's going to be a theme with those calico clams today. Yep, found yet another. Also have one of those, oh, a nice black scallop. I rarely find the scallops that black, so I'm definitely going to keep that guy, even though it's a little chewed up. And something orange, okay. One of those orange calico scallops and a rough scallop. Now you can tell those not in great shape, but on the bottom it kind of has wings, whereas the calico scallops, they have more of like triangles. So that's the way you kind of tell the difference between the rough scallops and the calico scallops, plus the colors. The calicos are typically that color. Here we have some spiny jewel boxes. They are merely lumpy, but that's okay. I happen to be very partial to those. And an olive. All right, it's kind of missing his top. Not the best one I've ever found, but just in case we don't find that much, I'm gonna keep it. Now normally I can do a scan on the beach, but it was so clear and most of the shells are kind of in the water here. So we're gonna scan with the surf kind of moving things around, and that's the challenge. You kind of see something, and by the time your brain recognizes what it is, and you're gonna go find it, it's already gone. But a day like today, it's not too hard to find it. Now this I spied, and I thought it was interesting because it is broken, but the inside of the shell is just as vibrant as the outside. I thought that was kind of interesting. A lightning whelk. Looks like a turkey wing. Yep, oh dear. Well, most of a turkey wing. Okay, cool. Those orange rough scallops. Very nice. Very partial to those orange things I find on the beach. All right, Florida fighting conch. I'll be it rather beat up. I'm always happy to find sometimes anything. Here's another calico scallop. Oh dear. I get asked a lot about sea glass, and that's pretty much what I find. I do find glass. I find it on the beach, so I guess technically it's sea glass, but you know, it's not anything that I would necessarily keep and treasure. So it's a lovely morning. The weather will be coming in later on, so I am cognizant of that. Always have a healthy fear of staying away from lightning. All right, cool-ish. It's a lightning whelk. Kind of broken and beat up. Nice size. I mean, I guess if I was vacationing, I would be psyched with that. It's a great vacation shell. Another calico clam. I happen to be very partial to those. I just think they're pretty. Yay! Here we have an apple murex. Nice shape. Good condition. That's great. What's that black stuff? Nothing. All right, cool. Yay, apple murex. And a juvenile Florida fighting conch. Okay, cool. It's got that nice little kind of X, that white X on it. It's kind of neat. Oh, oh, most of a banded tulip. Well, no, I wouldn't even say most. Some of a banded tulip. A lettered olive. Okay, he's almost got his, he's got his top. It's not very pointy. I'm gonna keep that anyway. So it's easy to kind of walk along and scan. Oh, another olive. He's okay. Another calico clam. Oh, but that's not what's interesting here. We have a slipper snail that's kind of stuck on that. So that is technically alive and that means it needs to stay at the beach. Another juvenile Florida fighting conch. Relatively good shape. I like, I just, I think the shape of those are so pretty. Another Florida fighting conch. Now, this is an adult one, kind of big. It's not the best one I've ever seen, but notice how smooth it is. It's very different from the juveniles because the juveniles, to me, they look very, almost like a different shell. So that's juvenile and look at all the little ridges it has. Very interesting that those shells are just different as they get older. They lose those ridges. So now I've kind of walked to the end of the island and across there, that's Coyoacosta. Boy, I'd like to go there one day. We'll get there. So this is where we are. That's Sanibel and that's Coyoacosta and then this is where we are at the very end of Boca Grande and if we zoom in a little bit more, that's the parking lot and then that's where we are. That little jetty, you can kind of see that and then in a little while, I'm going to walk up past that way, just so you have an idea of what that is. So that is the Boca Grande Pass and Boca Grande is actually Spanish for big mouth. That's where it gets its name because of how big that that waterway is between the two islands. I'm going to take a peek at the beach over here and see what's going on. I like to start in the water and it looks like really small pieces of broken shells, not all that much going on over here, but what is on the very end of the island is that lighthouse. We're going to talk about that a little bit later, but just again, just to kind of give you an idea of the positioning of things and where they are. I did manage to find a little bit of a shell pile down here. We'll take a closer look and see if there's anything interesting. We got a prickly cockle, some arcs, that is just a piece of a giant Atlantic clam. See some other common stuff. I saw a spiny jewel box, lots of slippers, lots of arcs, so lots of common shells. Again, if you were vacation shelling, you might be in heaven, but I kind of get here a little bit more than that. It's another one of those calico clams. So lots of stuff, but nothing really spectacular, although that's kind of cool. That is a yellow prickly cockle. Somewhat common, but I don't really find them all that much and I love when they're bright yellow. I'm going to keep that guy. And a lettered olive. Oh, now he's pretty. Nice markings. It's dark. Oh, bonus. I get some little shells in there. Very cool lettered olive. So Boca Grande is known to have some pretty good fishing. There's lots of people out fishing. I'm going to make my way back to the other side and I saw someone had found this little horse conch and put it on the rock. Had to check it out. It's in terrible shape, so I'll just leave that for somebody else. So turtles make their way up here. That is a turtle nest right in front of that little lighthouse there. And now I'm going to be quiet for a minute and give you guys some beach time. All right, next thing I found was another lightning whelk. It's an okay shape. It's a nice size. I've heard that the lighter ones are female. The dark ones are male and the lighter ones are female. That's what I've heard. That is, I don't know what, that could have been a male or female. Don't know. But that is a lettered olive and a shark eye with a little hole. That probably started out as a drill hole and just got a little bit bigger. But yay, shark eye. Another lettered olive. I like the dark ones. There's not too many I don't like. I just like those olives. All right, I think I see a piece of a lightning whelk. Yep, that's all it was. Just a piece. Oh, well, I was kind of hoping it'd be bigger. Oh, well, that's a lovely rough scallop. And again, you can kind of see the wings on the bottom, those little pieces that kind of flare out. And that is a bay scallop that has almost the same shape as a calico scallop, but they're always that white, brown, orange color. Very cool. Okay, at this point, I've spent a good amount of time on the beach and kind of like walking the shallows. I think it's time to go snorkeling. See if that increases our chances of finding anything. Some little bait fish, some fish swimming around. That's fun. And I'm kind of seeing what I was seeing on the beach. Lots of arcs. Kind of hoping I'd even just see a little piece of something stick out and be happy to dig it out of the water. What do I see here? Oh, all right, a broken auger. Not that, not that exciting. Yeah, it's to me looking like kind of like a shell pile on the beach, but it's just kind of under the water here. Keep searching. What I did find is I love snorkeling. Snorkeling's awesome. And I went and I figured all the shells are kind of much closer to the shore. So I'm just going to kind of scan this area and see if there's a piece, any kind of anything sticking out. And as I was doing that, I spied this huge chunk of moon snail. That thing would have been a monster. I'm bummed it was broken, but keep looking. See if there's anything else to check out. That's the part I like to walk right there. And not seeing too much. More fish. Okay. Lots of fish. I'm looking for shells. So there's pieces. Oh, what did I see? An olive. And it's shiny. You can even see that it's shiny underwater. All right, cool. I got myself an olive and an apple murex. Half of an apple murex. Oh, well. Still nice to see something that we haven't been really seeing. So at this point, snorkeling didn't really, I didn't find all that much. So I'm going to walk around that other piece of the jetty. There is more beach on the other side of this. At the end of this, there's more beach. So I figured I'd go over there. Let's see if there's anything over on this side to check out. Looks a bit like it did. Oh, calico clam. Those did not disappoint today. And this is looking a lot like it did on the other side, except actually there's not that much rolling around. I spied a broken shark eye. He didn't know it was broken until I picked it up. Had to check it just in case. Just in case it was a keeper. And okay, a broken Florida fighting conch. Looks like it had a run-in with a bristle worm. At least it's nice and clear. If it was cloudy, it definitely would be disappointing because you just don't know if there's stuff in there. A turkey wing. All right, cool. He's in pretty good shape. And a Florida fighting conch. Yep, that is an adult Florida fighting conch. That also, yeah, bristle worm got a hold of that. Nice pretty orange on the inside. And then this little area here, I kind of saw more shells kind of moving around. So I spent a minute over here kind of picking up broken things and seeing if there was anything else over here I could dig up. I did have a piece of clam I was kind of sifting around with. And for my efforts, I was rewarded with a nutmeg with a little hole in it. That's okay though. On a day like today, I'm happy just to see a nutmeg. So that was it. That's all I really found here at Boca Grande. And I want to talk a little bit about these lighthouses because there's two of them and it's very confusing. So the first one you'll see there in distance, that is called the Port Boca Grande Lighthouse. Now that lighthouse was first lit on December 31st, 1890. It's a two-story raised frame dwelling with a lantern placed in the cupola at the peak of the roof. Now the keeper lived in the lighthouse and then the house to the other side, to the right of it, that was the assistant keeper's house. The Port Boca Grande Lighthouse was deactivated in 1966 and it was abandoned by the Coast Guard in 1969. It was neglected for a while and went into disrepair, but in 1980 the lighthouse was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Restoration work began in 1985 and in 1986 the light was recommissioned. Currently the Port Boca Grande Lighthouse houses a museum and is open to the public. So that is the first and the original lighthouse here on the island, but there's a second one here. That is the Historic Gasparilla Island Light, which was originally built in 1988 in Delaware and then later moved and reconstructed in 1927 on Gasparilla Island. The light was not manned but continuously maintained by the keepers of Boca Grande. The lighthouse is a 105-foot steel skeleton tower and has a cylindrical tower. The lighthouse was important to commerce in the area during the early part of the century, guiding ships from various parts of the world through the Boca Grande navigational channel and into the safety of Charlotte Harbor. In 2016 the U.S. Coast Guard decommissioned the lighthouse, which had stood as an active aid to navigation for 90 years. The determination was made in part because of modern-day GPS usage by boaters and the existing Port Boca Grande Lighthouse that serves as a harbor light two miles south of Gasparilla Island Lighthouse. That's the one we just talked about. The Gasparilla Island Lighthouse was officially decommissioned as an active aid to navigation in the beginning of 2017. Now if you do find a critter, like a gopher tortoise, don't put it in the water. That is what the sign is telling you. That is one of the few things if you find, do not put it in the water. So I thought that was kind of fun. I learned a little bit about the lighthouses. It was very confusing. Why are there two? Which is which? What is it called? So that was kind of cool. And Boca Grande was really, really cool. There's no gas stations in Boca Grande, with the exception of a street pump at the Boca Grande Marina. So many of the residents used golf carts, which I thought was really cool seeing all these people kind of torn around in golf carts. So this is what we found up in Boca Grande. A whole bunch of those calico clams. I didn't show you me picking up all of them, but I did collect a few because that was kind of fun. The lightning walks. I found a bunch of olives. Got that shark guy. A couple of those Florida fighting conchs. A bunch of real pretty scallops. A couple turkey wings. And then I did get an apple murex and a couple of the nutmeg and a spiny jewel box and so on. It was fun. You know, it was cool to check out Boca Grande. It was not as fruitful as I would hope. But what are you gonna do? I can't control these things. At least I did manage to find something. So thank you as always as coming along with me. Thank you for your comments. Thank you for all the links and the pictures and stuff you guys share with me. And I'll see you again next Sunday.