In October, I got to spend a few days at the world's prettiest beach, Siesta Key.  And in appreciation of my wonderful time there, I left a little fairy near the waves as a thank you.

Honestly, it is a beautiful, beautiful place to be, and not just in my mind, it is always winning America's top beach lists, like this one.

Of course, are there any BAD beaches on Florida's Gulf coast? I'd be surprised. There are grains of sand in every type, and as much as I love the powdery, cool sand of Siesta, I enjoy wiggling my toes along other shores too.  This fairy was made as a thank you to Turtle Beach, a little way south of where we stayed in Sarasota on Siesta Key.

We had more to be thankful for there than just a pleasurable stroll in the sand…. we were grateful to get home safely!

In the search for more shells than we'd been able to pick up where we were staying, I looked online and saw that there was a slightly deserted area at Midnight Pass, south of Turtle Beach where shells were abundant, if you didn't mind a bit of a walk.  So, we drove to the end of the road, and took off walking along the beach, down the sand to what looked like the end of civilization and filled our bags with pretty shells.  We also lost track of time, and realized it was getting late as we headed back.  So we trudged through the sand back the way we'd come.

And we trudged.

And trudged.

Then trudged some more. And I regretted my decision to not bring a water bottle thinking it was a pleasant day and we were only going on a short walk.  (Kind of like a 3 Hour Tour).

We hadn't picked a landmark when we left our car.  So we kept on a trudging and tried to find where we'd parked it.  We were getting a little worried, tired, hot, thirsty and bug bitten by then.

As the sun was setting, we came across a couple who told us we'd walked way, way too far past our car and needed to turn around.  They said the easiest way back was to follow the Yellow Brick Road.

?????

And then showed us the way through their condo complex, which was actually a side walk with yellow bricks that led to the road, which led us back a mile or more to our car. Much easier than walking through the sand.  And much better than walking the wrong direction.

(this is a preliminary sketch for my art journal, not done yet)

Here is the co-inky dink part- I live in Kansas, and if you've read my blog, you might have noticed that I'm a big fan of Yellow Brick Roads and all that goes along with them.  This guy who helped us lives in Florida, but was actually from a town nearby me in Kansas.  

And he told us that we'd walked by Stephen King's beach mansion down at the tip of the key.  Well, it was Halloween week, and we'd been totally immersed in "Fright Fest" on AMC, including a day long Stephen King marathon the day before! Here we were lost in the dark, practically trespassing in the yard of the king of horror.

But that wasn't the end, as we finally neared our car, and thought the saga was over, we heard a terrible fight and a woman screaming for help in the clump of  trees on the other side of the empty parking lot.  We were in a isolated area, at night, creeped out and tired.  But we called 911 and locked our doors, waiting for a policeman to come and save the poor screaming woman, whose cries stopped as a man drove off on a moped.  We didn't hear her after that, and hoped she was safe. The officer sent us on our way and went looking for her with a high powered flashlight. 

I hope she is okay.  I tried to look up Sarasota 911 reports but had no luck.  We went back to our happy, cozy, Siesta Key condo on the sand, hoping for the best for that poor woman who had screamed with such fright. And our own trek through the sand as we searched for our lost car in the dark for hours didn't seem as bad any more.  We were safe and I sure hope she is too.