Conch shell on driftwood at Sanibel lighthouse

The Sanibel Ligthhouse is all dressed up for Christmas with wreaths and big red bows bringing festivity to the salty air. 

seashells on driftwood -Sanibel lighthouse beach

The cool, windy air brought a few of my favorite shellers out to the beach as well… like Wanda and Lori. It’s always so much fun to see yall- “Shello” to your family!

Sanibel dreaming for Wanda and Lori

As soon as I walked on the beach, I met Ruth Anne and Mark (VA) who showed me a beautiful TULIP and WHELK they found in the water on the way to the Sanibel pier. Thank you for the tip! I headed that way and found some too.

Shellers Ruth Anne and Mark from Virginia visit Sanibel-1

On the way around that east tip of the island, I saw Penny who I met on our shelling adventure to Big Hickory in July. She found an abshellutely beautiful double SPINY JEWELBOX that was “cemented” to a CROSS-BARRED VENUS – like Mother Nature crafted the perfect little display stand to show off the long spines and dabs of purple she painted on the inside of this artful shell.

sea whip and shells on Sanibel beach-1

As you can see in this next picture (wet shorts and nets), Penny and her husband Greg found most of their shells in the water but there were plenty of shells scattered along the beach too.

Penny Greg Austin TX find shells on Sanibel Island-1

So…. I took a video while I was shelling around those tree roots that I’ll show you. I miss doing my videos! So I filmed some fun shelling around the tree roots (in between the lighthouse and pier) where Mark told me he found his TULIP. But…. Ugh- now I remember why I haven’t posted videos lately. The dang thing won’t download clearly! I took this next vid on my iPhone 6s – if someone can tell me why it won’t download to Youtube without being clear, please give me tips so I can get y’all some good footage? It takes hours to download.

Until then, pretend like the water has splashed up on your sunglasses like you know it does… and keep shelling through the water drops on your lens. Hey, we do that any way, right? When there are shells washing in, we dont have time to get out our little lens cloths and clean our sunglasses off- we just work around it and get shells and bling while the gettin’s good. Oh… and watch out for those tree roots too! Dont worry about the bumps and bruises we’ll get when those branches stab us in the ribs or bump your head while we work around them… we’ll heal later. hahaha Ok, and one more thing… if you get a little queazy when the camera is moving too fast to catch those shells, you might not want to watch this while drinking a milkshake- just saying. heehee

Even through your salty sunglasses, it’s still fun, right? Ha! Did you see Penny and Greg in the background still shelling too? fun! After I took the video and a few photos of the shells I found, I realized that I really didn’t need to take any of these shells home, the Shellaboratory is filled with these same shells so I left them for someone else that may not have found as much…

shell ferry left seashells for shellers

Just seconds later, a taker. Yes!

Sanibel lighthouse beach path walk way
Sanibel lighthouse with whelk seashell on driftwood-2