captiva island sunset

The weekend started with a spectacular sunset painting the sky with brilliant hues of reds, yellows, blues and even purple.

captiva island dramatic sunset

We figured this was a great sign to get out on the water in our boat to search for treasure. We found it!

Seashell treasures Boating Day

And I found three MOONS! … a BABY’S EAR MOON, a SHARK’S EYE MOON, a COLORFUL MOON SHELL…

Moon shells

Clark found a huge empty TRUE TULIP on one of the mud flats around North Captiva…

empty tulip shell

There was a wrack line of shells on Cayo Costa…

Cayo Coast beach shells

There were hundreds… no, I think there were thousands of SOUTHERN SURF CLAMS littering the beach…

surf clams on the beach

Here are a few all cleaned up…

Southern Surf Clams

Here’s a close up of the SOUTHERN SURF CLAM since I’ve never shown them before. This would be a great shell for shell crafting!

Southern Surf Clam Exterior

Southern Surf Clam Interior

We found most of our keepers on the beach but other than Clark’s big TULIP, we only found these little FLY SPECK CERITHS on the mud flats…

Fly Speck Ceriths

We had heard there was red tide moving onto the Cayo Costa area but we didn’t feel that irritating tickle in the chest and had no “red tide cough”. We did see a few dead fish which was kind of creepy at first but then it seems we can always find something cool about any beach drift.

cayo costa fishbone

Fish bone skeleton

A few more treasures from our weekend in paradise…

whelk on cayo costa

leopard crab shell cayo costa

dolphins by our boat cayo costa

Dolphins dancing in gulf coast