1. View the July 11th Oil Spill Update ~ Click Here

2. View All Oil Spill Updates for Panama City Beach Florida ~ Click Here

You know what I did this weekend? I spent my days at the beach. The oil free beach. The no oil smell in the air beach. And I loved every second of it.

I finally got the chance to see some of the oil spill clean up crew and they were kinda in action. If walking in pairs up and down the beach means action! They literally walked in pairs, 4 pairs total, about 20 yards apart just staring down at the sand looking for any tar balls that may have washed upon the sand. I couldn’t spot any. They couldn’t spot any.

I took the kayak out. I had to. The water was super calm and I wanted to go out to the pier and see if I could spot anything interesting in the water. I saw some pelicans. I am always so impressed with their wing span and how the tips of their wings point downward and graze the top of the water while they fly over it. And I love to watch them dive down to snag up a fish or two. They are just so giant! I saw a giant school of fish hanging around the pier. They reminded me of the school of fish in Finding Nemo that would make shapes to help Nemo’s dad and Flo get to where they needed to go. Swimming all in the same direction and then with one quick flip they all jump and go the other way. I paddled out right above them and they were so beautiful! Lots of shimmering silvers and reds underneath me! It was such a sight to see!

I think I spotted only one piece of June grass still hanging around that was about the size of a quarter in diameter, other than that, the water was crystal clear. And I saw a nice sized mana ray. It was close to three feet in diameter just swimming along about 10 feet out from the shore. So graceful they are.

Alex is moving in… He brought some heavy rainfall with him this morning. At least that’s where we think it was coming from. It’s nice and calm now but it is expected to rain off and on all afternoon. It’s definitely humid out and the temperature is right around 85 degrees. Still shorts and t-shirt weather!

B showed me an amazing map that shows the trajectory of the oil with the currents as well. It’s really interesting to see and it’s actually much more accurate than all the other maps that I’ve seen out there. You can check it out HERE if you’d like. The black is the oil and when you hit “play” it starts to move. The purple shows where the oil was. Hit “first” to play it again from the beginning. If you can’t understand it, leave me a comment or email me and I’ll do my best to help walk you through it.

I’m so excited that people are still coming down here on their vacations. This picture was taken from a lady, Heather, and her family who came down here, oil or no oil and clearly saw no oil. *Remember, all pictures on my blog can be clicked for a bigger picture. She was so glad that they didn’t cancel their reservations because they would have missed out on one of the best vacations they’ve ever had. Oh thank you Heather! I’m so glad that she was able to come down here and relax… even with all this oil spill doom over our heads.

I can’t wait to head to the beach this weekend! I’ve been told that a lot of the condos are actually pretty much packed or completely packed. It’s so good to know that people will still be able to really enjoy the great celebration weekend! I just hope they remember to clean up after themselves!

Tags: panama city beach oil spill update, panama city beach oil spill update pictures

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 and is filed under the beach life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.