After missing last year, my friend Tim and I spent two days at the beach near my home in southern New Jersey, and continued our long tradition of sand sculptures. They were smaller and somewhat less inspired than in the past. As Tim said, “Our best ones are behind us.” I thought I would document them here all the same. This is Tim’s creation imitating some of the ideas of master sand sculptor Calvin Seibert, a favorite of ours.

Tim at work on his sculpture. Some of his hand-made tools are on the left. Tim does not like his picture shown, but I feel this one is sufficiently anonymous to pass muster.

My sculpture from the first day. My original plan was a trough that the ball could roll down, but the ball was too heavy and kept crashing through the sides, so I gave that up and just made it a ramp.

The second day I made this horseshoe-shaped wall to hold off the incoming tide with pancake and drip towers on the edges. Again, not inspired, but fun to do.

My wife Ellen and her sister Ann, also visiting, made this tower/pyramid.

The most interesting sculpture was Tim’s on the second day, an odd worm making a pretzel shape as it emerges from an egg. The pretzel part was the most challenging and time-consuming. That’s it for this year, at least so far. You can see many more sculptures from past years HERE.