Tybee Island Mud Hole

...Tybee Island, Georgia carries with it the un-official title as being the most nostalgic beach north of Florida. Well...ok.

We visited Tybee as a way of passing the time while awaiting our dinner reservations at Paula Dean's famous eatery. Roughly two and a half hours on the best beach Georgia has to offer...

I came away with the following...

Ocean water the color of iced coffee...

Sand which can best be described as moistened Quikrete, which actually hardens on the skin if left unattended...

No seashells or shark teeth, but thousands of fossilized fragments of unrecognizable ocean debris, which washes ashore with each mocha-colored wave....

You are charged an hourly fee to park, which is strictly enforced...

The only changing rooms available are ancient, concrete stalls reeking of well-aged urine, and a rusty double sink, which failed to produce any water...

I kept experiencing flashbacks of Baylor Beach...a pond in Wilmot, Ohio...

While walking along the shoreline, one must keep an eye out for the oncoming skimmer, (watered down surfer punk riding a three foot long, concave board over two inches of water at twenty miles per hour,) and the inevitable collision...

I watched with mild amusement as a fellow nearby, having recently drained his last can of Schlitz from the twelve pack he'd been nursing on, laid down for a drunkened nap under the blazing sun with the temperature hovering around 92 degrees.

An hour or so later, having not moved a muscle, his mouth slightly agape, eyes melted shut, he was approached by a curious passerby who'd grown concerned.

Minutes later, lifeguards arrived to the scene and found the burnt lush to be unresponsive to their attempts at awakening him.

The police arrived...

A crowd gathered...

Empty cans of Schlitz began rolling away with the ocean breeze...

At last, having failed at all other attempts of hospitable ressurection, one of the police officers began kicking the man in the thigh...

I snuck in for a closer look, picture phone in hand...

It took between 5-8 healthy kicks from a policeman's boot before the gentleman rolled over onto his side, blindly swatted his arm through the air, and instructed the cops to, "F--- off!"

Of course at the time he didn't realize he was talking to police officers, since his eyelids were fused together from the sun's raging glare...

My family watched a gentleman, who could've played Patrick Swayze's character in a "Point Break" reunion movie--fifty-plus years old, flesh burnt to cedar, savagely receeding hair line, skimming the coastline with what can only be described as a home made, plywood table top. And he performed quite well. Spinning in circles at an insane rate of speed, while bulldozing over any man, woman and child in his path. I nicknamed him, "Table-Top Guy"...

My kids gathered around a boy who'd decided to bury himself in the Quikrete sand up to nostrils, not realizing the hardening strength that mortar possesses when exposed to the sun on a hot afternoon. We called him, "Mud-Boy." He may very well still be there. In the same spot, forever embedded in what the locals may call sand, but what the rest of us use to patch up cracks in driveways, or for properly securing mail box posts into the ground...

That's what I found on Tybee Island, prettiest beach in Georgia.