Lance Aux Epines Beach

Bryant and I have a beach that is about a seven minute walk from our apartment.  The reason we haven't posted about the beach so far is because the boats like to drop anchor out further to sea and dump their sewage.  It's not really dirty water, but it's not nearly as clean as all the other beaches, so we don't swim there.  It is a really nice place to go for a walk, however.  Bryant and I headed there Sunday afternoon and ran into this guy on the way.

Let's go in for a closer look, shall we?

 

Yep, that's a silver spider with striped legs.  The picture doesn't do it justice, but it was metallic and shiny.  Also, it's blurry because I was standing a few feet away and zooming in for this photo when the spider jump-twitched and (since I was looking at the zoomed-in spider on the screen) I screamed.  It was like he was going, "What? You want a piece of me?"  VERY scary.  We left quickly after that, without getting a clearer up-close photo.

Then we got to the beach.  It's so peaceful and beautiful there.  P.S. That's Bryant's leg poking out of the tree.  The trees here do not have legs.

We sat on a little dock that goes out in the water and talked about where we would go if we could go on any vacation within the US.

 

The verdict:  Kansas, Idaho, Connecticut, and North Dakota, you are among about 30 states that should not be expecting visits from us any time soon.

 

On the way back, we cut through "crab field" and this time I remembered to catch a few snapshots of these little guys.  Here's one still in his hole:

 

Here's one heading into his hole because we got too close:

 

And here's a picture of the field. 

It's hard to see but all those little orange-ish spots are land crabs.  We've been told the local kids will reach down the holes to grab them (how do they not get pinched?!), then tie a string to them and walk them around like dogs.  I haven't seen it yet, but I hope I do soon!