This actually isn't the first message in a bottle that I have written about. There was one last year that was found on Holly Beach full of love letters about a love that was lost. You can read those letters HERE and cry along with me as I wrote the article. It appears that another message in a bottle has been found, except this one actually has coordinates as to where it was placed in the water.

Nikki Norman
Nikki Norman
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From just looking at the bottle, we already know that whoever placed the bottle in the water was down for a party. You don't just SIP on Fireball for a leisurely afternoon fishing. You are there to party and have a good time. The paper inside is actually really well decorated and has the names of Captain Rob, Joe, and Jessica. We can gather that the bottle was placed in the water on July 2, 2022, and Nikki Norman found it on Holly Beach in the last day or so of August 2022. So how far did the bottle travel in a month? Roughly 600 miles give or take!

Nikki Norman
Nikki Norman
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The upper left corner of the paper has 27 and an up arrow and 84 and a down arrow. Assuming those are the coordinates, they are, I plugged those into Google maps. I also assumed they means 27 degrees north and since the numbers are on the left side, the 84 meant west, since we are in the western hemisphere. Now, is this the proper way to assume coordinates? Probably not, but the results I got made sense. Plus, someone else commented eventually that confirmed I was correct. Look, the most I've navigated on the water is in our old 24ft pontoon boat when I was a teenager. Cut me some slack!

Google Maps
Google Maps
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The coordinates came up as somewhere off of the coast of Florida near Sarasota/Tampa. It seems they were pretty far out when they dropped the bottle, roughly 80 miles off the coast if you go directly to St. Petersburg/Tampa. That seems very feasible for a charter boat or big offshore boat that is prevalent in that area just as we have in our area. As for any other information? Perhaps the Fireball really got to them because they didn't include any way to contact them if the bottle was ever found. I attempted to Google "Captain Rob Fishing Charter" and literally found half a dozen Captain Robs. I decided to not obsess so much with this as my OCD really wanted me to. Perhaps the real Captain Rob will find this story and speak up!

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Today these parks are located throughout the country in 25 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The land encompassing them was either purchased or donated, though much of it had been inhabited by native people for thousands of years before the founding of the United States. These areas are protected and revered as educational resources about the natural world, and as spaces for exploration.

Keep scrolling for 50 vintage photos that show the beauty of America's national parks.

 

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