This past weekend I went to Fort Morgan to spend some RnR on the beach and to be lulled  to sleep by the crashing waves of the Gulf of Mexico. This was my first trip down there since the Deep Horizon tragedy and to see for myself what impact the oil spill has had on a beach that I have visited more times than I can count my last thirty-six years.

As I drove down Fort Morgan Road there was one thing that was clear, property rentals were down. I saw five times as many rental agency signs and vacancy signs than I have seen in the last few years. I usually encounter many people on the road, towing boats for fishing behind them as I make my way down to mile marker 4 but I did not see one. The Chevron that is normally full of big tank like sedans owned by snowbirds was nearly empty and the hot dog stand and the bait shop were no more.

When I got out of my van I did not smell oil, but I smelled the salt from the Gulf. The smell of the beach that I love filled my nostrils and I was glad that I was there. I was still debating if I would let my kids play in the water or even play on the sand and was thankful that the house we were at had a pool and that under the house was plenty for them to play with. We unloaded our stuff and then I stood out on the porch and looked out over the beach.

It was breathtaking. From where I stood, on the porch, the beach was beautiful and the water was calm. In fact, the Gulf was gently rolling onto the shore, and it was a clear blue-green color. It looked like perfection. A perfect end to summer days on the beach.

Then in the distance you see oil rigs. Even though they have been there for years, in the past they have been ignored. I really had not paid that much attention to them. During the day you were too focused tanning on the beach or splashing in the water to notice and at night they were just beacons of light. Not only were there rigs but also huge barges that even the BP workers, who were constantly driving up and down the beach, did not know what they were there for. Some days we counted four, and others five. These barges came and went but were always present during our stay.

The first day we were there I did not see any oil in the Gulf. At least not from the from the edge in which I stood, but it was in the sand, burried, only to be unearthed by scooting feet of those of us sitting in chairs or by little kids digging in the sand with their shovels. The tarballs look like cat poop in a litter box without the smell. But don’t get me wrong, they do smell, and if you get the oil on your hands or feet or skin at all you have to do a great deal of scrubbing to remove it.

Right now if you were to get into the Gulf I am not so sure oil should be your biggest concern. The sharks are bad and they come in close to feed. The friends we were staying with had video of a shark that was in the water that was less than knee deep. The stingarays will come even farther in to feed and getting stung by one is not pleasant. And let me not forget about the flies. The flies at times were so thick, and they bite, leaving huge whelps on your skin and even drawing blood.

While we were there we spent very little time down on the beach. We mostly stayed up on the deck where the pool was. The heat was unbearable at times over the weekend. In fact it was stifling. In the past five years that we have visited the beach at this time of the year we have not encountered heat like this. So between the oil and the heat there was not many beach goers though the few I did see did go into the water but their jots out were short. In fact, my boys, did go into the water a few times but they were not in it long and when they came out they didn’t have any oil or residue on them that I could see.

The last full day we were there though the Gulf was like glass. It hardly moved. It was so calm it was like bath water and you could see clear to the bottom. It was so perfect and tempting that I finally grabbed me a float and decided to venture out into it. It was low tide and I must have walked 30 yards out until it finally reached waist height. Then I laid on my float and tried to relax and then it was like I was in the midst of a giant BP dump in the sea.

There was oil everywhere, in clumps and also stringy and runny looking patches all around me. It stuck to my float and it stuck to me and it came up all the sudden. The oil, that in days past we had not seen in the Gulf, was there in a large amount, as if someone had just dumped buckets of it at that very moment. If you are a parent, you may have had one of those times when you were bathing your babies or toddlers and they pooped in the water and you saw either a runny mess or turds floating around your baby that you were trying to wash clean and you get grossed out and panick, pulling your baby up out of the shit filled water. That is how I felt in the Gulf, 30 yards from the shore on Sunday morning at mile marker 4 as I made my way to the shore.