alphabet cone

Nice ALPHABET CONE, Denise!  She found this incredible shell (incredishell) while beach combing with her family Devin, Paul and Gwyneth (they found awesome shells as well!) at Big Hickory Island on our iLoveShelling adventure earlier this week.

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I had such a great time seeing everybody find ANGEL WINGS, WORM SHELLS, SUNRAY VENUS shells and some much more. It’s what makes it so special to me.

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beach combing

It was so much fun to talk to Sarah and Catherine about their shelling trip to North Caicos they took last year. After I posted about our trip to Turk and Caicos in 2013, they followed our same trip and loved it just as much as we did.

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seashells on green

I’ve “met” Jason and Twyla on iLveShelling Facebook page but I finally got to meet in person on our trip. It was a blast to hang out with y’all!

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Jason showed me the KNOBLESS FIGHTING CONCH he found compared to the regular “knobbed” FIGHTING CONCH. And of course one of a few SAND DOLLARS he found.

knobless knobbed fighting conch

Subreda and Sumita came all the way from Mumbai, India to visit local sheller Menju and to join us for our shelling day. They are awesome they even shared some yummy Indian snacks – deeee-licious.  Thank you so much for shelling with us, y’all.

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These are some of Sumita’s shells…

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The shelling girls Mickey, Becky and Carolyn came out to shell with us too.

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Mickey found her first SEA PEARLS…

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Sisters Robin and Sue went for totally different shells.

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Sue found an awesome ALPHIE, ANGELS, TULIP, KINGS CROWNS and cool Beach Bling like BRYOZOANS and SEA PEARLS.

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Robin found happiness in the mini shell pile… look at that sweetest lintiest SAND DOLLAR omg.

mini shells

We were in the presents of lots of other mini shell lovers too like Cheri.

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Hey Hey, They are back! Jerry and Livy are learning their way around Big Hickory better than anybody on the beach and in the water. They’ve been on this same cruise quite a few time and it’s so dang cool that Jerry shares his knowledge with everybody too.

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On our boat ride to the island, I saw Jon and Bob with snorkel gear so I asked Jerry if he would give them any tips. While Romaine combed the beach her men, Jon and Bob snorkeled around the water and used some of Jerry’s advice… Oh yea. Happy faces!

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Most of our shellers found their treasures on the beach, like Diane and John…

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… and Laura, Mike, Paula and Jim

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… and Wendell and Liz . 

maybe fulgurite lightning strikes sand rocks

On the return boat ride after our fabshellous shelling adventure,  Bob and Romaine had mentioned they find Fulgurite pieces (fused quartz that happens when lightning strikes the sand. Remember the movie “Sweet Home Alabama”? ) on beaches of North Carolina and they thought they found some FULGURITE on Big Hickory too. Since shellers are so like minded, I showed their pieces to our whole boat of shellers … come to find out, we all collected similar pieces. Ok, so…. these are the pieces in the photo below. We are still trying to figure out if they could be FULGURITE. Last year on this iLoveShelling cruise, we had a geologist on the boat and he thought it was wave tumbled concrete from an old concrete structure. He thought the holes were old shells that had crumbled over time. Hmmmmmm… the mystery continues. Concrete? Or FULGURITE? Whadaya think?

In the comments below, I believe Jon had the winning answer along with the geologist from last year…. it is fossil sediment that over time has hardened into rocks that the BORING PIDDOCK has drilled into. So the holes are from a mollusk in the family of the ANGEL WING. Isnt that awesome? Those sweet little fragile shells can sure make their mark in such hard rock. So cool!

It was an amazing day with awesome folks. Thank you for coming!

pam rambo with shellers on cruise
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