Morning Constitutional

This morning we slugged down our orange juice, piled in the car, and headed for the beach.
I’ve been trying to take some form of a walk every morning, and what better place than the beach? At the very least I’d sand off some of those calluses on my feet. Plus, this Massachusetts girl is still adjusting to the steady upper 80s, so the best non-airconditoned time for me is in the morning. 

 

          

 It’s the off-season here in Venice, so there was plenty of parking and long stretches of beach with nary a soul, although there were a few locals:

          The sandpipers were skittering about, the water was perfect, and the tiny seashells invited us to pick them up. We didn’t spot any shark teeth – something Venice Beach is famous for due to it being a pre-historic shark dating site – but a little girl was optimistically out there with her sifter.

    

     There were also a couple of teen-to-twenty-something (I'm at that awkward age now where I have no idea how old anyone is) volunteers posting stakes and stretching tape measures.

 Turns out their job is to check the beach every morning for turtle nests and stake off the area; this is the time of year turtles emerge from the sea to lay their eggs.

Real nest

False nest. Maude must have just been scouting here.

 It’s a major event here, with admonitions to use only red lights outside if your house is near the water and other warnings so they don’t get waylaid in their mission. Can’t have the turtles thinking, “Come on, Maude, let’s see what’s shaking in downtown Venice!”