Turning Seaweed into Dolphins and Rockets

How many times have you tried to take your family out to do something cool and had it go sideways? Most of us have. But sometimes, we get something even better in its place, albeit unexpected. That’s exactly how we turned a beach full of seaweed into wild dolphins and rockets!

Having taken the day off work to spend with the family, we packed lunches, drinks, sunscreen, and headed out to the Atlantic ocean to spend the day on the beach. When we got there, I noticed there weren’t a lot of people. “Cool! Beach to ourselves!” was my thought. The walk up to the beach was gorgeous. So beautiful, we stopped to take a few family selfies.

After climbing the ramp to the beach, we looked out over the beach, expecting sand, sun, and beautiful water. What we saw, however, was the sun, murky water, and a TON OF SEAWEED! There was so much seaweed you couldn’t see the sand for much of the beach.

There wasn’t any place to set up a beach spot, and the water wasn’t inviting at all with large amounts of seaweed, murk, and sand fleas. But, despite the bad luck, we tried to have a good time. We ate lunch, looked for seashells, and said hello to the other unlucky visitors on the beach.

After 20 minutes, however, we’d had enough and decided to go back to a lake near the condo we’d heard of. So we packed up and headed out.

We had only driven a short a few miles when I noticed several groups of cars gathered on the side of the road here and there. Families and others were all playing in the water. There was even an ice cream truck bouncing up and down the two-track along the highway.

“That looks fun. Let’s try that,” I said and pulled off the road.

I may have hit the brakes a bit too hard because all the kids in the back shouted in unison, “WAOH! What the heck, dad!?”.

What we found was a series of cute little sandy spots with shallow water. While driving along the edge, we saw wild dolphins surfacing! (Yes, we still get excited at dolphins.) We grabbed our snacks and toys and piled out of the van. We spent the next couple of hours at this cute little spot.

Within a few minutes of being there, Elizabeth and I saw a little stingray swimming around the water and found several cool shells. Recently the little kids have taken to looking for shells with a curious method that is a little alarming when you first see it. They put on their goggles and then lay face down in the shallows of the water. Yes, it looks like they have drowned and died. I did say it’s a little alarming when you first see it.

What happened next was unique and entirely unexpected. We were lounging and snacking when suddenly Sadie yelled out, “Something just launched over there!”. We looked across the water where she was pointing, and sure enough, something was indeed launching! We all watched a tall rocket shooting upward from a giant cloud with a very bright flame trail.

That’s when it dawned on me that we were near the Kennedy Space Center. It was a rocket that was launching and a dang big one! After a bit of research, we discovered it was SpaceX launching the Starlink system (Sort of sounds like something from the Terminator movies, doesn’t it?)

By the end of the trip, we were all really pleased with how things had turned out. I appreciate it when God reminds me to go with the flow sometimes.