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Tag Archives: beach combing

Beachcombing in Ohio

27 Saturday Jun 2020

Posted by winifredcreamer in Ohio

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beach combing

Before we get to beachcombing, let’s talk about the beaches in Ohio. When we arrived, I was chagrined to find that most of the lake shore consists of low bluffs that drop 10-40 ft. to the lake. That means the shore is inaccessible or consists of cliffs in most places. Where you can access the shore, there is no sand! Beaches are usually gravelly. Bring your water shoes! How can beachcombing be a big deal when a) there are hardly any beaches, and b) they are rockslides, not beaches?

Only Ohioans know that beachcombing along the shore of Lake Erie is as rewarding as along any beach in the world. The basic equipment necessary for collecting beach glass here is simple. It’s a ziploc bag. Why? Because here in Ohio, everyone collects much smaller pieces of beach glass than anywhere else I’ve been. Some of the tiny bits will fall through a mesh pocket lining, hence the plastic bag. We’ve seen more people on the beaches, and I mean every, single, beach, than anywhere else in the world. I am speaking as a dedicated beachcomber, too. Honestly, more people visit every beach in Ohio, every day, than we’ve seen from Aruba to Australia. I’m impressed. Also daunted.

A rainbow of pottery that I found on Lake Erie beaches

When you look at Facebook sites dedicated to Lake Erie beachcombing (there is more than one), you see photos of all colors of glass. More blue glass can be found here than anywhere, and people show off lovely pieces of red, orange, and yellow glass that are rarely found anywhere. In comparison, I have one piece and three crumbs of red glass after six years of beachcombing. It is possible to find marbles along the shore here, too, though I have not found any red, yellow, orange glass, or a marble, in a month of looking. Along the shore of Lake Erie, some people swear by digging in the gravelly shore, others gather glass by visiting isolated beaches by kayak. There are lots of dedicated searchers, including one who posted a photo out his car window at six a.m. as he waited for the town park to open.

At dawn every day, beachcombers get going. By the time I take a stroll down to the tiny beach at the foot of 80+ stairs by our house, there are footprints from previous visitors. Fortunately, the Lake is constantly washing more bits and pieces up on the shore. Whenever I go for a walk on the beach I can find something.

Over the course of our month here, I have accumulated enough glass to begin making earrings and necklaces again. Our biggest haul came from the morning we spent at Edgewater Beach, just west of downtown Cleveland. When we arrived, I looked at the long, smooth shore and despaired of having driven more than an hour. As we walked, though, we found beach glass mixed in the crushed shells along the shore, in the sand, and washing up out of the lake. We came home with an excellent collection and far more than we collected anywhere else in a single visit.

Ohio, I salute you! There is no more avid group of beachcombers anywhere in the world. You may not have an ocean, but Lake Erie is the Mother of all Beach Glass.

Lake Erie calm (L), storm coming (R), after the storm (Below)
A few seconds of Lake Erie waves

Where does all the beach glass come from? Cities including Cleveland disposed of their garbage in the lake for many years. Factories, too, used the lake as a trash can. A General Electric plant that made glass insulators is said to have emptied the leftover molten glass into the lake at the end of every shift. I collected pieces of this “black” (actually dark purple) glass to experiment with.

I believe there are people who put glass into Lake Erie to try and amplify the supply, but there would have to be a bargeload of glass dumped in every year to take the place of all that is collected.

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Santa Elena Peninsula, Ecuador

29 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by winifredcreamer in Ecuador

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beach combing, Beaches

We chose a peculiar area for this trip, based on our archaeology backgrounds. We wanted to visit the sites we’d heard of for so long. Neither of us looked at the region on GoogleEarth, for example, where it appears as a gray patch on the otherwise bright green surface of Ecuador. At this time of year, the Santa Elena peninsula is very dry and tends to be overcast, which we discovered when we drove north to visit the Valdivia museum and the sun was out. On the days we’ve driven north, the sun has appeared as soon as we get about 10 miles up the road.

We discovered the charms of the region right away. We walked down the beach in front of our house and found a man playing a romantic Latin tune on the trumpet while the rest of his family swam and played on the beach.

On another day, we drove to the part of Ecuador that juts furthest into the Pacific Ocean, Salinas point. It was Saturday and there were lots of visitors. The ocean extended as far as anyone could see.

We had wonderful beach combing in many places. Playa Rosada is a place that many people recommend. I didn’t find the sand particularly pink, but perhaps the sun needs to be out. One of my favorite beaches is the stretch north of Valdivia and San Pablo and south of Montanita. We found a couple of very old pieces of beach glass, one colored lavender from the sun (these mostly date prior to 1915), the neck of a glass jug and the base of an old spirits bottle.

On the way home, we stopped for a look at the “Antiquities” store and saw old radios, fishing tackle, chandeliers, even electric typewriters, though I doubt they still work.

8.27.18 spondylus calcifer
8.25.18 Museo Valdivia Ecuador-006crsm

On our last day of beach combing, I found a piece of spondylus shell. It’s not much to look at, a piece from the center of a spondylus calcifer, but it’s the only fragment we’ve seen. A little research shows that there are spondylus species in all the world’s temperate oceans, so the shell that ends up in jewelry in Peru, where it is very popular with tourists (it was used by the Inca), probably is all imported from Asia. There certainly isn’t much left in Ecuador.

We visited beaches that host nesting turtles earlier in the year. There are even covers that are used to mark turtle nests, though wouldn’t it be better leave them anonymous? We also saw this sign, that I don’t think sends the correct message. It says: KEEP THE BEACHES CLEAN SO THAT MORE TOURISTS COME.

I’d rather have the beach kept clean because that’s good for everyone. When we walked on the beach we were reminded of the present state of the oceans. No matter where you are, there is lots of plastic on the shore. If you visit a clean beach, it’s because someone cleaned it before you arrived. There is no escaping ocean plastic, even on gorgeous beaches where it’s not immediately visible.

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Snorkeling in Aruba

04 Saturday Aug 2018

Posted by winifredcreamer in Aruba, Paula

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

beach combing, snorkeling

Our Airbnb house had snorkeling equipment and I found enough to fit, though Jonathan found that his knees don’t much like snorkeling any more. We went snorkeling at Rodgers Beach, in sight of the former refinery, and saw many small fish. We found even better underwater terrain right by our house at Savaneta beach. The shore is a mix of rocks and sand and it was a bit of a balancing act to put on fins. Once in the water, though, visibility was excellent and we saw clouds of tiny fish along with some bigger ones. The small patch of mangrove seems to have been home to the billows of minnows of several species. We watched tiny black fish defending the sunken tire or coral covered brick that was their home base from all kinds of larger interlopers. At Savaneta Beach we met a group of men who usually have lunch on the table we happened to be using. They ended up advising us to try Boca Catalina on the north end of the island, which is a lovely beach with bigger fish than at Savaneta.

We returned to Savaneta for one last exploration because Wayne wanted to reach the barrier island that was a couple hundred yards off the Savaneta dock. With snorkel and fins that distance is no problem when there isn’t fast moving water or marine traffic, so we crossed with relative ease. I’m reminded that I don’t really like the deep water when I can’t see the bottom, but it probably took us less than ten minutes to cross. We’d both carried our sandals to do some exploring. There are a couple of houses out there and Wayne was curious about who would build out there and why, since a big storm would wash over the narrow gravelly strip. We saw that one house was abandoned but the other was someone’s summer home carefully gated across the entrance. A walkway lined with, beach glass, pebbles, and chunks of coral led to the dock! The entire spit of land was the big surprise—it is made of beach glass. Imagine sitting in front of your beach house at your cafe table and chairs amid a carpet of green and white glass pebbles. The entire barrier island is less than 50 ft. wide though it extends for about 500 ft parallel to the shore. We didn’t cover all of it once we discovered the carpet of glass. There is as much as at Glass Beach in northern California. I found a plastic bag among the usual shore detritus and picked up as much as I thought I could carry on the swim home. We laughed at how easy it was to collect pieces that we’d been combing the beaches to collect elsewhere on the island. It was a fantastic last day on Aruba. The swim back took two or three extra minutes as I carried my bag of loot to the other side. This was the perfect last day of snorkeling in Aruba. I now have jewelry-making supplies that will last a year or more.

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Playa Los Organos

18 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by winifredcreamer in Peru

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Airbnb, beach combing

Our home stretch into the north took us from Piura to Playa Los Organos. We saw more of the damage from El Nino as we left Piura on bumpy roads, the asphalt having washed off last year. Road construction detoured us every few kilometers for the first hour of our drive. After that, the road was merely bad, partly peeled away in places, one lane each way in others, and full of potholes along the rest of the route. The landscape changed as we drove, getting dryer and dryer, sandy hills covered with tan fields of grass that sprouted after the El Nino and died as the water dried up. We stopped for a breathtaking view of this brown scenery at the top of a hill, sandstone and scrub reaching to the horizon. We only misinterpreted our Airbnb directions once, and a quick call to our hostess got us to our rental house facing the beach near El Ñuro. It was a pleasure to stop driving. Our house is perfect, lots of outdoor terrace and chairs, a tiny pool, and a view of the Pacific.

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Why stay here when we already live opposite the beach in Barranca? The water is warm. We went for a swim the afternoon we arrived once the blazing sun drifted into the late afternoon mist. It was blissfully cool and not straight from a melted glacier. Divine. Just down the beach at the pier is a colony of sea turtles and we saw the carapace of four former turtles in the sand.

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Talk about beachcombing! I did not bring a turtle skeleton home, but I’m thinking about it. I have to see whether it is illegal to possess marine turtle shell. We did find a few other things along the beach.

From here we will explore the beach, other beaches and towns from Mancora to Tumbes.

 

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Beachcombing Treasures

04 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by winifredcreamer in Sicily

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

beach combing, jewelry making

A great pleasure of being retired is having the time to dabble. I am a great putterer and after beachcombing extensively in Italy, I wanted to make something of my finds. I took the plunge and bought a Dremel. For the uninitiated, this is a tool that can be used like a drill, a polisher, a small grindstone, and mini electric sander. Once I discovered how to use the diamond drill ends by watching Youtube, I made a bracelet. The stones in this bracelet are from the beaches of Sicily, especially Heraclea Minoa, where there were lots and lots of flat, oval pebbles.

The bracelet was such a success that I decided to make a necklace. I used what I had on hand to connect the stones. These were labeled head pins and had a small decorative end on a straight wire. I bent them to fit and coiled the ends.Beach glass was next, and I selected pieces that were generally triangular, though there are several irregular pieces. Once I drilled them all, I strung them on beading wire with tiny crimp bead as spacers.I used these because that’s what I had with me. (Notice the clasp consists of a hook and a fishing swivel.)

I’m going to continue collecting beach glass so that I can make more. I know that you can make “beach glass” in a rock tumbler, but I am happy to wait until I find the real thing.

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Off the beaten path at Lough Melvin

07 Monday Aug 2017

Posted by winifredcreamer in Ireland

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Archaeological sites, beach combing, Landscape

We set out on a loop from Bundoran to Manorhamilton, on to Rosinver, then back to Bundoran. We started with the farmers market in Manorhamilton that turned out to be very, very small. After buying a few things, we went in search of a ring fort and we found a site, but it wasn’t the one we were looking for.  Having mostly struck out, we saw a small hand painted sign at the start of the last leg of the drive that said “Scenic Drive” and so we turned that way. The map showed a route between a bog and a lake, possibly a good spot for some birdwatching.The road turned out to be a narrow lane, where the plants brush against both sides of the car. The bog was either on the side of or over the top of the mountain and we were on a hiillside far above the lake, Lough Melvin. The sun was out and the view was gorgeous over blue water and islands, with Bundoran and the sea in the far distance. It could not have been lovelier. We picnicked and looked out over the lake with our binoculars and realized there was NO ONE on the lake from one end to the other. It’s a Friday afternoon of a national holiday weekend (August Bank Holiday) in a popular tourist area and not one single person was on Lough Melvin. We decided to go down to the edge of the Lough. We found a perfect place, a tiny rowboat harbor and boat launch ramp. No one was there, despite the boats. We strolled along the shore and were met by three horses and a pony checking to see whether they knew us. After they trotted off, we walked the edge of the lough, which is pebbly and rocky. You’d need water shoes, but the water is warmer than the ocean.  Perhaps with the ocean so near, no one bothers with the Lough except to fish. In the US, there would be a giant development somewhere along the lake. As we walked along the shore, we found fragments of glass and pottery that had been tumbled in the water. It was some of our best beach combing, and there was no beach.

After our long stroll marveling at the absence of people, the bright sunny day, great sights and finds, we headed for home, and saw an animal cross the road. Almost as dark as a black cat but with a weasel head. It may have been a pine marten. Another rarity capping a rare day.

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Beachcombing in northern Norway

08 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by winifredcreamer in Amanda, Norway

≈ 2 Comments

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beach combing

6.7.16Beachcombing is not so simple in our area–most of the shore is rock. There are a variety of clams, whelks and we learned that little sand trails come from lugworms. (Amanda is our visiting marine biologist.) There is still a lot to look at when there is a sandy spot, and a surprising quantity of junk along the high tide line. Most of it probably washes in from boats, garbage escaping from the ferry, etc., but some is local. Originally, I said that the person who found a piece of narwhal tusk would be the beachcombing champion. After we arrived, I looked up narwhal and found they live in Canada and Greenland and are nowhere to be found in Norway. No narwhal for me. In any case, our first day walking along the rocky shore in Kjerstad, Jonathan took the prize for the entire Norway beachcombing season, by finding this:

6.5.16 Kjerstad-016smA blown glass float in its netting. I concede.

Today we woke up to 9 degrees C (48 degrees F), howling wind and rain. When it let up we went exploring to the nearest town with a store, Ramsund, only about 35 minutes drive (vs. a hour to the next closest store). We bought more fishing tackle (fishing post soon) and picnicked in the car (still cold out). We saw a new bird, too. A redwing.

In the late afternoon, the rain stopped and we went for a walk along the shore near Kjerstad, just looking at the birds, the new snow on the mountains that surround us, naval vessels going by, beachcombing. Then I made my find:

A reindeer skull
It may have died from being tangled in plastic rope.
My trophy.

The reindeer skull and antlers are in a place of honor on the shed roof. The beachcombing stakes have gone up. Who knows what we will find next!

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Beachcombing at the Albufera del Medio Mundo

31 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by winifredcreamer in Lillian, Peru

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beach combing

The Albufera del Medio Mundo has the best beachcombing on our coast. We had an interesting walk, first along the lagoon and then along the beach.

12.27.15-002smNest of an American Oystercatcher

Nest of an American Oystercatcher

 

 

There were a lot of different things to be found along the beach.




We found the skull of a sea lion.


Only one person walked by us, though we could see people in the distance.

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And Away We Go

31 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by winifredcreamer in California

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beach combing

Mendocino has been a blissful environment, yet tomorrow we leave. Yesterday, I put some of my beachcombing shells back in the water.

8.29.15 spring ranch.15-001

In addition to packing, we spent our last day beachcombing on one of the best beaches yet, the Mendocino Headlands. I found a lot of abalone pieces, but left them in place for the next person.

8.30.15 Mendo headlands-003sm

This final beach had the biggest, strangest tide pools, including several giant chitons.

8.30.15 Mendo headlands-007sm

Giant chitons curl up when you pick them up.

8.30.15 Mendo headlands-004sm

Under water they stretch out.

8.30.15 Mendo headlands-016sm

Sea stars, sea urchins, hermit crabs….

8.30.15 Mendo headlands-009sm

It was a wonderful afternoon.

Jonathan appeared as a ghost.

8.30.15 Mendo headlands-013sm

Amazing that we had never been to this beach before. It was a great end to this visit of exploration. We’re on to Barcelona on Friday.

 

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The Relentless Beachcomber

21 Friday Aug 2015

Posted by winifredcreamer in California

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beach combing

Not many people have the chance to go beach combing as often as they would like, we usually do this occasionally while on a short vacation. I’ve now had three months when I can go beach combing almost as often as I like. I can collect anything I find, with the understanding that at the end of our stay it will all be returned to the ocean. Not entirely, I’m keeping the tiny bottle I purchased at a flea market that I have been filling with tiny pieces of glass that we collect from the beach.

beach glass bottle8.21.15-021

I will surely keep an abalone shell even if I have to send it to myself at the storage unit. I will have fun during our last week here putting abalone and sea glass bits back into the water.

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8.6.15 Abalone -sn

We’ve branched out (ha ha) into driftwood lately–many beaches don’t have much abalone or glass. Here are some of the pieces that I haven’t incorporated into hangings or windchimes.

8.21.15 driftwood

I have pieces hung around the house.

8.11.15 home decor-003

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