Fun DIY Sand Castles on the beach!

Hi fellow Steemians,

Had to share a fun little sandcastle build I had while vacationing in Florida recently!

One of my favorite things to do at the beach is mess around in the sand. Whether that’s dig really big holes, look for sea shells or in the case of this post, build some fun and elaborate sand castles before the ocean comes back and destroys it all. I typically build the castles in the range of the waves and tides so that it eventually gets taken down by the water. I kind of like the pressure of building it before the waves come in, seeing how far I can get before the inevitable end with waves.

I kind of got some inspiration from the castles in Game of Thrones. Those things were awesome! I envisioned the castles near the water in the building, like Storms End and Dragonstone. Not as elaborate of course but still a fun concept.

The other concept I got inspiration from was one of the games I played quite a bit, Taichi Panda 3: Dragonhunter. It was a fun MMO but it got too addicting so I ended up having to stop playing. It had some pretty awesome scenery. The castle I got inspiration from was from the main castle in Lion Empire.

Not the most detailed picture of it, since web searches don't yield the best results but as you can see, it's quite an elaborate castle. Towards the bottom of the image, where the banner is, is one of the circle ramps you can barely see starting to round up to the right. Towards the left there are some cool arches and lower passages that I got inspiration from. Really fun game if you're into MMO's!

Day one build

The first build I had was closer to the water so I was focusing more on the external walls that would fight the losing battles with the ocean waves. It was also the less elaborate because I wasn’t sure how people would react. Some get annoyed when you do things in the sand for some reason. I’ve had people tell me I ‘can’t do that on this beach’ as if I was making some awful permanent stain on the planet. Some people are just unfortunately very unhappy in their lives so they take it out on others that are enjoying themselves harmlessly. Thankfully the folks on the beach both days we were there building the castles were cool with it. Apparently quite a few people were enjoying it taking photos as they were walking by so that was cool to hear when I was done lol I would've gotten a little stage-fright had I known they were photographing me while I was doing it.

I had started a similar concept on day one that I did on day 2. I built a big middle mound but this build I was trying to build a bunch of towers on the side. It took a bit too much time to do that. Some of the waves started to get close to the outer wall, as you can see the sand near me is wet, so then I made an additional tower. It kind of reminded me of Pyke, being that close and outward facing towards the elements.

Day Two Build

Day two was a lot of fun because I knew where the water line was and we had more time on the beach before we were going to leave. It was also much nicer weather. The wind was a little tough while we were there and this day was good, there was very little wind so we got to enjoy it rather than rush and shiver.

This build was different, I kind of focused on having just one wall with one moat. The other one had two walls and two moats.

One thing that was fun was building the huge center mound that the castle stood on top of. My wife looked at me funny when I was just making big piles of sand into a bigger and bigger mound, unsure of what I wanted to do or when I was going to stop making it taller.

I unfortunately didn't take a picture before this stage, I thought I did, but the early stages are seen after things started to come together. I wanted to improve on the design of the previous build so I decided to connect the two center towers with a big bridge, which to me was where they would bring horses, wagons and supplies to the front keep. It came out pretty cool, I think! I also wanted to make a circular ramp that would be a way for imaginary people and carts to get up to the primary keep. This was kind of cool to figure out how to construct without it falling apart, and having it look realistic. When the big center ramp around the middle keep was finished, it kind of reminded me of the path that led up towards the Great Sept of Baelor where Cersei needed to walk the walk of shame. It led from the important center area down to the lower, commons where us peons live and work.

I wanted to add an element of realism to it. When you have a big bridge connecting the two towers, you would certainly also need a way to let people get around, aka under, that. I was a little nervous to try it, I didn't want it to completely fall apart and make me spend more time fixing it.

I was glad the under the bridge part really ended up working out, allowed me to do something I've never tried with the sand castles so that was cool.

One of the most fun things was doing this with our son. He’s getting very creative and was giving me some ideas. One of the ones I didn’t think of until he tried to do it was build a little ramp down from the front tower, to the lower area. He had his little LEGO car and was driving it around but asked how he can get down? Can we build a ramp like the big one? Didn’t think of that but definitely made it!

With this section below, I wanted to make a kind of road. I wanted it to look like cobblestones that you see often in the castle depictions. There weren't a lot of rocks on the beach but there were thousands of sea shells so that was a good substitute! We had to use quite a lot of the shells because the color of them was very light.

That’s as far as I ended up getting with the sea shells. I wanted to keep going but we were having a bit of a tough time trying to find more sea shells that were decent. We found lots of small ones but they were scattered all over the place. I didn’t want to spend the whole time looking for them instead of improving the build so I felt that was a good stopping point. I had wanted to bring the shells all the way up the ramp to the keep but the best laid plans don’t always pan out.

My wife brought the little houses up the ramp, that was her contribution so that was cool.

At this point the build was pretty much complete.

The adventures of the Lego man!

The sunset and angle of this picture were pretty cool, wanted to capture it well!

Share something!

Have you done anything like this? I’d like to see! Share a story or photo with me in the comments below.

If you didn't notice, I'm a pretty big Game of Thrones fan! I read the books before the TV show came out so the show was pretty awesome to watch. I also have a lot of fun being (what I think is) creative and showing our son things outdoors that he can have fun with. There is a lot of things you can do if you just try to be a little creative and think with your imagination. I think that a healthy imagination is great, especially for kids! Too much is focused on putting them in front of a screen to just sit endlessly tapping or watching TV. It was pretty cool, at the beach there were quite a few kids who really enjoyed the castles, one of the little boys kept walking over to help but the parents didn't want him to mess things up. I told them I don't mind, but they still didn't feel comfortable which was fine. Kids imagination is vital for them in my opinion.

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