Shipwreck Beach

Today we made the trip to Shipwreck Beach, which is about an hour from Misawa. We parked in this little driveway that was definitely not a parking lot, but it's really close to the shipwrecks. Then we walked down this little gravel road to get to the beach and the shipwrecks. I wish I knew the story behind the wrecks, there were four ships on the beach.

We set up our picnic lunch, using the picnic basket that we got from my aunts at one of our wedding showers. I had Annelise all dressed up to take pictures, but this beach wasn't quite right for that. The other beach we went to was a little more beachy, this place kinda reminded me of Galveston.

After we ate our lunch, we went hunting for sea glass. This beach is on the bay, not the ocean, we have access to the Pacific Ocean, Lake Ogawara, Lake Towada, and Mutsu Bay all within one hour of Misawa. Shipwreck Beach is known for the wrecks, but it's also known as a great place to find sea glass.

This is the glass we found today, that's a lot of glass for only about 1.5 hours of looking. We also didn't go all that far down the beach. Next time we'll park at another place and explore the other end of the beach. On our way back to the car, John took a pic of Annelise and me in front of this gigantic pile of shells. We don't really know where these shells came from, there were no shells like this on the beach. We don't know if this is just where they put all of the shells from the restaurants or if someone is in charge of combing the beaches for shells or if they somehow got them from the bay, but it's A LOT of shells. And they smelled. There were birds on top of the pile of shells and I worried that they would trigger an avalance of some sort.

That's right, all of the white things in the background are shells. Anyone want some shells from Japan? We had lots of fun today and I can't wait to pick up some wire and such to make jewelry with my sea glass. We got blue, green and clear glass, and apparently you can also find red and purple glass, although those colors are very rare. I think I'll need to see some samples so I know what to look for. The darkest blue piece I found looked like a rock until I licked the dirt off of it. Yeah, I know that's gross; I felt like Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs or Kirsten Gum from Cash and Treasures (now called Treasure Hunter Kirsten Gum). So anyways, I'd like to go back to Shipwreck Beach with more time and a slightly warmer day so that I can search more thoroughly for darker glass. Until then, I'll have some fun with what we brought home today. And, let's face it, I've got more than enough crafty projects to keep me busy.