Dauphin Island, Alabama

I have never been to this area of our coasts, but have been so fortunate to meet so many wonderful people on Facebook that do live on Dauphin Island, Alabama.  One of them is my passionate friend Joy Harper Hartley Russell - I simply wanted to post her heartbreak about her precious island.  I hate watching the scenes of oil, death of our wildlife and the destruction of our fragile eco-system on the Gulf Coast, but I don't live with it every day like Joy...

These are Joy's words to me and her photographs...

I am posting this everywhere I can, and hope everybody reads it-- SOMEBODY has GOT to DO SOMETHING !!!!!

Dauphin Island, Alabama- a place of THE most intoxicating beauty anywhere [see my photo albums of this enchanted place]- a paradise for people, birds, and sealife- is in dire danger, just like nearby Grand Isle [see  ...article below] we may be next- this is horrible- I HATE BP-my mama told me not to hate, but in this case I can't help it- they are ruining beaches, the ocean and it's creatures, killing birds and turtles and sealife and people's livelihoods, all because of negligence and carelessness and I HATE BP--just read the following article to see what America's entire gulf coast is facing, and even the eastern seaboard and Florida Keys if the oil gets caught up in the loop current. I HATE BP !!!!!And YES- I am BITTER !!!! 

Love, Joy 

This was the article that Joy sent me last week - since then I know a lot of things have changed, but I wanted to stick with Joy's story. http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/21/1642166/an-empty-brown-beach-leaves-a.html?asset_id=1608261&asset_type=gallery#ixzz0og5bf3peSee

BP OIL SPILL: A DEADLY BROWN BEACH LEAVES A BITTER TRAILGRAND ISLE, La. -- The first wave of oil swept onto the beach. The tourists swept out.The few people who bothered to visit Grand Isle Beach Friday came out of morbid curiosity, to see the proliferating drips and blotches and puddles and pools the color of Coca-Cola.`

`My God, our beach should be crowded, the start of a big weekend,'' said Lynette Anderson, surveying the ruinous mess along the surf line. ``We kept hoping it was going to miss us. Should have known better.'' The gooey, adhesive stuff portended an economic disaster for Grand Isle, the only inhabited island on Louisiana's Gulf Coast. Tourists keep this beach town alive. The tourists had vanished.``All of them canceled on me,'' said Lisa Rhobus, who runs the Cajun Holiday Motel. Every room had been booked for the weekend. But her parking lot was empty Friday afternoon.

Grand Isle, a mile wide, hardly eight miles long, offers a brutal model in miniature of what a giant oil spill brings to a tourism economy built around the beach and the sea. The town, with only 1,500 permanent residents, lives off the 300,000 visitors a year who come to fish and swim and play on the beach and bath in the Gulf of Mexico waters. None of that was evident Friday.``The only paying people I have at Cajun Holiday are workers helping with the clean-up,'' Rhobus said. ``This could just about kill Grand Isle.''

If Florida wants to regard Grand Isle as a laboratory to study the effects on tourism from that dark swill vomiting up from the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon, early indications look damn near fatal.

Grand Isle's mayor closed the beach Friday afternoon but his order was not much more than an empty gesture. An obvious question hung over a mostly empty strand: Closed to whom?Just across Caminada Pass, a surly Jefferson Parish deputy sheriff guarded the entrance to the beach and wildlife reserve on Elmer's Island, another local tourist favorite, as if keeping the press away would keep the news of the island's defiled sand and poisoned marshes from reaching the mainland. ``You wonder why all the hostility,'' said John Hazlett, a University of New Orleans literature professor, who, like The Miami Herald's reporter and photographer, was turned away like a criminal trespasser.But the mood all along the Louisiana coast was turning bitter this week, a month after the oil rig exploded 50 miles out in the Gulf, as the spill finally reached the coast. The ecological and economic damage was finally transformed from abstract speculation to miserable reality.The tidal pools along the long rock jetty protecting the west end of the island were tinged with orange with dark splotches, like brown lily pads. A scattering of dead hermit crabs offered proof of the water's sudden toxicity.``I waded out there and you could feel the oil coming underneath the surface on your legs,'' said Todd Vegas, who had abandoned plans to spend the weekend fishing off Grand Isle. ``Even if you can't see it on top, it's coming in underwater.''And the stuff reaching the shore Friday was just the beginning of awful news for the island community.

Helicopters flying over the Gulf waters spotted a monstrous mass of oil seven miles off Grand Isle. ``It's coming our way,'' another deputy told me. ``All that oil you're seeing on Grand Isle beach now. That's nothing compared to what's coming.''``This is like something out of a sci-fi movie,'' said Vegas, as he contemplated that giant slow-moving underwater cloud, like an alien invasion hovering in space, that threatens so much ruin along coastal Louisiana.``Did you say you were from Florida?'' Vegas asked. ``Hey man. All this . . . it's coming your way.''

These are all images that Joy has captured - before any oil has hit their island.  

Please keep all of our Gulf Coast friends in your thoughts ......

Poplar Beach/Bluff Top Coastal Park

Last spring on one my first adventures by myself in the Bay Area, I discovered Poplar Beach, a jewel of a city park in Half Moon Bay. This has now become a favorite escape to the beach for me. Lots of FREE parking and during the week, it's easy to find a parking space, although on the weekends it is a bit more difficult - especially during the summer months.

I love going here to just sit and enjoy the roar of the surf, the seabirds playing in the wind, pelicans diving in and out of the Pacific - doesn't matter to me if the sun shines or not. Lucky for me that there is a path that runs all along the bluff with benches scattered along the trail. On weekends you might not get lucky enough to find an empty bench, but this past Tuesday with high surf and roaring wind it was no challenge.

For me, there is something about a day on the coast that is NOT sunny, it is infinitely more interesting. This was one of those days, pounding seas, roaring up the beach, tangling up kelp and tumbling shells and sea glass with almost a violent power. I wanted to laugh out loud with pure joy!

If pelicans and seagulls could talk, I really do believe that they would exclaim their joy, as these must be favorite "play days" for them too.

Days like this are not great shell collecting days, as it could be very dangerous to turn your back on the surf. For me, this is so difficult as I always want to stuff shells, tumbled beach glass and bits of flotsam in my pockets! Still managed to come home with just a small handful; am always fascinated by the different kinds of shells that I find in California. Look at how the sand and the power of the water have flattened out this oyster shell so that all that is left is the smooth gorgeous mother-of-pearl color, almost transparent in its' delicacy.

Finally had to find the cliff trail back up to the top of the bluff, as my poor ears were freezing cold, and my fingers were like ice..