More than seven million travelers head to Gulf Shores annually because of the beautiful beaches along the coast. The clear waters and soft, white beaches are enough to make any beachgoer feel drawn to Alabama’s shores. The sugary, white sand isn’t just a publicity hook when describing the Gulf Coast of Alabama. The beaches along the coast are as white as sugar for a reason. The sand here is made up of tiny grains of quartz crystals. These crystals have [...]
Ahhh . . . There isn’t anything like that feeling when your bare feet first touch the soft, sugar-white sand on Alabama’s Gulf Coast. As you walk, you may notice a squeaking noise coming from under your feet. There is a reason our sand is so white and soft, and so apt to make a squeaking or whistling noise as you walk. The sand on the beaches of the northern Gulf of Mexico is made of tiny grains of quartz crystals that have washed down from the Appalachian Mountains over thousands of years. [...]
Don’t you just love walking barefoot on the beautiful, soft sands of our beaches? (It’s a rhetorical question - we know you do.) But did you know that those barefoot walks at sunrise or sunset have benefits to your physical and mental well-being? Walking barefoot in the sand stimulates thousands of nerve endings on the soles of your feet. It grounds us. Sand, like grass and other ground surfaces, has negatively charged ions that experts say are a source of [...]
Does it ever sound like the sand is squeaking when you take a walk on Alabama beaches? There’s a very scientific explanation for why that happens. Squeaking - or whistling - sand is heard when quartz sand is well-rounded and shaped in spheres, according to Scientific American magazine. “The frequency of the sound is related to the mean grain size and the amplitude is controlled by the surface texture of the grains,” according to the article. “The loudest squeaking observed [...]
