On Florida's east coast awaits a quiet respite that looks the same today as it did hundreds of years ago. And each summer, a peaceful pilgrimage is made in the stillness of the night.
The soothing sounds of nature are met with curiosity at the end of a summer day.
"They don't have any teeth and they crush it with their jaw,” explains Avia Michelle Woulard, an interpretive ranger at the Canaveral National Seashore.
Woulard is explaining how a loggerhead turtle eats, while passing around the skull of a massive turtle.
At this national park, visitors are welcome to stay late to behold a natural phenomenon when a mother turtle deposits her eggs.
"She is going to drop between 100 and 120,” Woulard tells the group.
"Turtle Watch" turtle nesting presentations give visitors an inside look at sea turtles first in a classroom, before heading to beach.
Once on the shore, visitors remain at a distance as a female loggerhead makes landfall to lay her eggs under the cloak of darkness.
"It's the texture of the sand, the magnetic force, that causes the female to return to where she was born to lay her nest,” Avia shares.
Since loggerheads are threatened, after sunset, lights and cameras are not allowed on the beach, even iPhones. With just moonlight, and the aid of red flashlights, guests can behold a natural wonder.
Turtle spotters run ahead of the group to find nesting mothers, before radioing ahead to guides. The evening ends when mother loggerheads finish laying their eggs and then swim back out to the Atlantic.