Stella, may I know about Caspersen Beach?
Why of course you may!Hello world. (really though, hello sis!) It's been about a week since my last post and shame on me... I have only posted three times and I have already started to slack. Try harder Stella May!
Today I want to share my experience at Caspersen Beach. While I am here in Florida, I wanted to make it a point to visit beaches. I decided on Caspersen Beach as it is known for shark tooth hunting and shelling. (shelling for me, shark tooth for Mister.) Located about an hour south of Tampa, it's at great location of a day trip. It was just a little harder to find.
Initially, when we searched for "Caspersen Beach" on Google Maps, we were led to a lush green park that was miles from the shoreline. Instead, I should have searched for "Caspersen Beach Harbor Blvd." (or for future me and you: 3900 Harbor Dr. S, Venice FL 34285) As we drove to now the correct location, we didn't think it was the correct place again—we saw large bushes and then a dead end. There were small parking lots (free btw!) but we didn't see sand or water. It wasn't until we saw other people dressed in beach wear that we hopped out of the car.
I've learned those large bushes we saw (the ones blocking our view of the beach) are dunes. There are boardwalks built to walkover and protect the dunes in the area. Once we crossed the walkover, we saw the beach (albeit a rocky one.)
This isn't the softest sand (head north to Siesta Key for that), but that's because it is full of shells! & shark teeth! The first thing we did was put our blanket down and hobble our way into the ocean. There were quite a few rocks to climb over so be prepared to wear your shoes into the water. Just make sure they stay secured on your feet! I wore Havianas flip flops and they started to float away!
After some splashing in the water we started to search for shark teeth. These fossilized shark teeth are millions of years old (that's why they are black) and are starting to wash up. I found best place to find shark teeth is to look at where the wave hits the shore or between the rocks along the shoreline. I just grabbed a handful of sand and picked through until I found the teeth. The more you go into the ocean the bigger the teeth. If you don't want to ruin your nails, there are tools to help you sift through the sand. The Florida Snow Shovel! It is basically a sieve. (you can rent these at the local shop or purchase them online) We brought along a mesh wire container and that seemed to do the trick. Mister used the container and found smaller shark teeth that my picking method would have just skipped over.The shark teeth you see above are actually from Manasota Beach. It's located about twenty minutes from Caspersen. I haven'y photographed the teeth we found at Caspersen, but they look very similar (just larger) to the Manasota one's. Manasota Beach is also a great place for shark teeth hunting and shelling (found lots of those too!). Manasota beach is less crowded and has a bigger sand area compared to Caspersen. We switched beached after we exhausted our search at Caspersen.
A few do's and don'ts: do find a comfy spot to sit and sift, do go the morning after a storm for the best search, don't go during high tide-- most of the teeth will be underwater, don't forget to reapply sunscreen, don't forget to have fun!
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