Beach at Panama City, Florida

A page for events and wonders around my home

Click HERE for the Second Beach page

My home in Panama City hit by Hurricane Oct 2018 -  Storm Page

an account of Preparing for & 20-days after the devastation

Useful ideas that worked & some media ideas that didn't

5.3meg file with Photos Panama Hurricane-2.pdf

  This is a page for sharing some hobbies and information around and about my home in Panama City, Florida. There are many photos and stories of interest which should give a fine perspective of the area.

2017 ended my first year in the Florida Panhandle, so my routines are getting familiar to each season.

A Feedback of ideas or just a chat is welcome. scburen@gmail.com

One hobby for exercise & adventure is to collect shells on the beach. There are good days like this one, where I find all that I can carry. Two buckets are over flowing on Crooked Beach, from gathering on the shore line and wading leg deep when the water is clear. About a mile further down the shore of this photo is Mexico Beach, and the Eastern Time Zone is just the other side of Mexico Beach.

Here are some shells that have been washed, and are drying on my porch. Then a painting loaded with small shells and painted sand dollars ornament the beach scene. This was done by an art teacher and friend in Kansas, Rachel Unruh. She also painted the concrete Sea Horses you may see hanging on the exterior of my house, and she has a few pages on this site, including some excellent and very specialized Recipes.

The sea shells are collected, cleaned, dried, and then I write theorybin.com on the shells. During busy weekends and Holidays, I hand these out on the Panama City Beach to anyone that wants one. They do not have shells of any good size on that beach, because the City combs the sand with tractors and screening machines to pick up trash. They also fill sand from dredges onto the beach to make them larger, and that usually wipes out or buries any natural shell beds close to those beach areas.

Panama City Beach

The purpose of distributing shells is to give a tourist and locals a memento of the beach, and offer them a flyer and sample page of this website's Biblical information from my Bible-Study page. First, I ask "Would you like to learn something from the Bible & get a seashell?", If they take a flyer, I give them a pair of shells with magnets & more if they ask questions. That simple introduction appeals to many, and some are enlightened by the gifts.

A psychiatrist would have to explain some disturbed reactions, from the one in a hundred that are truly anti-social people, usually of foreign cultures.

Most people are delighted to get a theorybin.com shell, because there are rarely any good size on that beach, being wlked over by 110 people each hour. I give them flyers, Sample-A; and  Sample-B and Sample-C in a folded double sided, two page item. Then when available I tell them "For reading my Flyer, I'd like to give you a Dollar", and offer a painted Sand Dollar. They usually enjoy at that statement, and others in earshot ask for flyers & a dollar too!

About one person in a hundred will hold a brief discussion, and one in five hundred will ask detailed questions. Those are all enjoyable sessions, and make a delightful day on the beach. When I get multiples of the same biblical questions, I try to add the answers, reference, and analysis to versions of my Bible-Study fact sheets, that I call my ABC's.

This Theorybin Author has also composed a simple reading of the Ten Commandments in a paragraph form. This is what I write on large sea shells, and hand out to interested kids at Panama City Beach. (from Exodus 20-23)

Some areas of Crooked Beach are often loaded with Fishermen. They keep coming back, so I guess they do okay in this area. The largest catch I saw was about 4-5ft and 100lbs years ago, but less since the 2018 storm. This is an off-road yet public on West side of Mexico Beach, that extends to Tyndall AFB, between mm137 and mm138.

(The location is stated, as people keep asking where I get my shells!)

The Mexico Beach access has good shell collecting about 1/2 mile walk to the west, if you wade in about 5-10ft from the beach. This is where I get a majority of my shells & you can go about 8 miles. The heavier cockles and conchs usually stay in the water until they are buried in the sand. The best season is February or low tide after a heavy wind storm.

Looking at some of the strange critters that wash onto the beach on occasion. I am told this is a Toad Fish. I have never seen nor heard of this before, but there it is, top to bottom and nearly a foot long. Other things to see are starfish, jellyfish, skates and rays, turtles, horseshoe crabs, storks, pelicans, and even bald eagles.

Here is a live snail under water with an eye on the end of a long black tube in front. This variety is a Fighting Conch. Some have colorful shells with interesting patterns. I throw the live ones back in the water.

And to the Right is a contrast to the snail, the Iron Man Triathlon is hosted at Panama City Beach in November each year. There are large annual events that host sports, or rallies of antique cars or motorcycles, or just holidays. My sport is on the beach, where you can jog barefoot for many miles on the hard packed white sand at the edge of the waves, and watch the sun change colors as it splashes into the Gulf.

These are two useful charts for the area. On the Left is the Average Water Temperature in an annual graph on what to expect each season. The water temperature stabilizes the air temperature on the beaches, and it may be 5 degrees or more difference than inland on some occasions, It does not get too hot nor too cold or bugs near the beach unless there is a North Wind.

On the Right is a Tide Chart that spans over a week, giving Tide in Blue over the past Week, and then what to expect for the next couple of days. Click the Orange Link below, to get the current tide chart for this week. Then click on the website image to get an Hourly List of the Tide forecast.

     Tides at Panama City Florida - Government Tide Charts

http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=tae&gage=pacf1/

Here are some Gulls on Mexico Beach, Florida, and they seem to like my Cheerios just fine. The birds on Crooked Beach do not take food from people, they are still in the wild and avoid humans. The Birds on Panama City Beach may swarm you if you feed them. So I suppose it is there environment and their familiarity with people.

This is my bungalow in Panama City, Florida, about 20% the size of my Kansas home, but very cozy and well located about 100 yards from the beach on St. Andrew Bay.

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