THIS IS BETTER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE!

"This is better than I thought it would be! So exclaimed our little Empress today as she lounged in her newly discovered "pool." We took the kids to a neighboring island for an afternoon of discovery. For those of you who are not familiar with the East Coast, there is a series of small barrier islands just off the eastern coast of the U.S. We live on one of these islands, Amelia Island, off the northeast coast of Florida. Directly south of us is Big Talbot Island, which is a state park and uninhabited except of course for the wildlife. It includes forested land as well as a beautiful beach. The beach itself is something to experience ... it is not your usual sort of beach. It is a boneyard of sorts ... not for animals, but for the remnants of trees left after tropical storms and hurricanes. I think Natalie had grave doubts about this excursion, not really knowing what to expect of this place. Plus, she had been informed on the way that this park did not have any swings. So she had decided it wasn't going to be any fun. When we arrived however, she discovered that in addition to the large number of tree carcasses, there were areas where top soil had been compacted into stone-like areas, and many of these areas had many small craters filled with sea water. She had a ball "swimming" and at one point made the above observation.
This is a truly beautiful place and we spent the better part of 2 hours exploring. The boys quickly peeled off from the rest of us and ran ahead to find a good place to swim. We just walked casually along, enjoying the large skeletons of once mighty trees, and various beach wildlife. This is an awesome place we would recommend to anyone!