SHONEY BEACH

Right next to Mermaid Beach you will also find the entry to head to Shoney Beach.

You had to check in at a gate when entering and let them know you were going to the beach there for the day so you also checked out.

 Down the road we went.

It was a mixture of bushes along the side of the road and then we came into a REALLY nice neighborhood with the biggest houses ever. It was super nice.

Then we would dead end into a place that had a large entrance with a gate that was private property. The next picture is a picture I took off of google earth. I completely forgot to take a picture of it when we arrived. Imagine that being the entrance to your home on the beach!

There was a small parking lot over to the side. I had read this is where you park (prior to coming).

There was a car that followed us into the parking lot. Once we parked I really wasn't sure where this entrance was (had seen pictures of a very neat walkway out to the beach...I just didn't know where it was. I watched where the girls went and followed them. Yep, that was it.

Ok, are you ready for this? This has got to be the coolest walkway to any beach EVER! (Much cooler in person)

You are walking under an archway (for a pretty long distance) of nothing but trees. It is so cool I tell ya. I think I was more excited about that than the beach at that point.

Once we got out to the beach, there was a large slop and several areas that you would have to walk out into the water to get around the trees (because people were camped out under the trees and had already claimed their spot for the day).

The sand was real soft, and like I said on a slope, so if you have mobility problems, this is not the beach for you...unless you stayed right at the entrance. I found it easier to walk along the water and then once we found our spot to put our things down under the trees, I then walked up into the soft sand to our spot. This would be our spot for the day (our things are in the middle).

Even though the pictures don't really show it, this place was popping with people. It seemed to be the "in place" for the locals to go. It was kinda back in the cut and not something you would just know to go to if you are a tourist and didn't do your research prior to coming. You wouldn't have even known there was a beach there. All of the nice houses along the road on the way there were backed up to the beach. There was a couple beside us that was sitting out on lawn chairs and they got up and went into their gate to the house after awhile. How cool would that be to have this in your back yard.

The hubby and I decided to head out to snorkel the area and the kids decided to play ball in the water.

Now lets talk about the water itself. It was really "weird" and not your normal walk into the water in the sand type of beach. You see there was this ledge of rock along the edge of the water. It was flat and man was it slippery so you had to be careful. Both Karl and I have already fallen once on this vacation getting in the water...no more! See the group of people in the above picture? They were hanging out in an area with all sand so I imagine if we would have went down further it would have been better.

I took this picture as I entered the water. This is NOT sand. It is hard rock that had everyone fooled into thinking it was sand because it looked like sand. Imposter!

 Once you got past the rock, there was big rocks (pic below) in some areas you had to go over. Then you could step down into the "real" sand and be in the water. Here is a picture I took from a video I had taken while snorkeling.

There was also swaying sea grass along that area too. I managed to find a fish hanging out in it that would go back and forth trying to hide with each movement of the water. He looks like he was smiling at me...or either laughing because he was messing with me as I tried to get a picture.

Note All these next few pictures were all taken with my GoPro while snorkeling. For some reason I didn't even take my camera in the water with me. So, I'm just taking a few screen shots of area's from the video.

So this area had a little bit of snorkeling with ledges and fish under them. But honestly it wasn't too interesting IMO.

We had seen enough and decided to rest in the shade for awhile. Then the kids went out to snorkel for a bit. I believe Karl is really liking this. He claims he's going to buy his own fins before the next vacation.

We were there for a few hours and then decided to leave. Here's a video of us walking back to the car in the "tunnel of trees"

On the way out these guys were on someone's lawn to tell us goodbye.