Big River Beach

We took our beach break at the Big River Beach.  I was looking for the Mendocino Headlands, but I'm glad we didn't find them, because we would have missed this.

I put my toe in the water and finally understood why everyone looked at us like we were crazy when we said we might swim.  So cold.  Even walking barefoot on the wet sand started to make my feet go cold and little numb.

Kelp growing off shore the whole length of the coast.  Not until we hit Oregon did we see an expanse of ocean not dotted with the tops of kelp forests. Washed up on shore, it looked like a Jules Verne monster.

Muir Beach and Overlook

After San Francisco, we travelled up the coast on Highway One.  We stopped early on at Muir Beach and then again at the Overlook.  The beach was gorgeous and I couldn't stop taking pictures of the mussels clinging to rocks.  Especially on the pale blueish-green rocks we saw up the whole coast.  This beach was the first of many overwhelmingly pretty things we saw on the trip.  We started to get beauty fatigue really early on.

Beachcombing

So, it looks like a fair amount of rain is in the cards for this first week of vacation. But it's the beach, so the rain comes and goes and there are periods of lovely sunny weather. And so far, during the day, the rain has been light and gentle. Yesterday, for example, I went to the pool to get in a workout session and it rained half the time I was there and no big deal.

But yesterday, we all got out to the beach late in the day for sitting and reading and I even took a little walk down the beach. .. and here are the things that caught my eye:

Dan swims!

I have been a big fan of ghost crabs since I was a tot in Pensacola, Florida. They're crabs without all of the pinching because they're too wee to do any harm.

Rain storms, at the very least, bring really impressive skies. Getting to see this keeps me from holding a grudge for too long.

At Last

On the road for vacation. For the last month, it felt like vacation would never get here. . .but at last, it has arrived! (That's also the name of the beach house my parents rented ("At Last". . . so, you know, cool.)

Two days' driving--a stop in Charleston, WV overnight and then on to lunch in Raleigh with Scott and then the final destination: Avon, NC on the Outer Banks.


Nice to be out of prairie lands. Sometimes Dan and I forget to miss the hills of our childhood, but vacation is a nice reminder as we swooped into Ohio and then the mountains of West Virginia.


This picture is mostly for my dad. Gorgeous round hay bales just outside of Charleston, WV.


Lunch at The Pit in Raleigh. Super yummy N.C. pulled pork, collard greens, steamed squash, hush puppies and biscuit. 95 degrees in the hot sun out on the porch (so that we didn't cook L.P. in the car during lunch), but it was still yumlicious. Thanks, Scott!


The road between Raleigh and our final destination gets prettier and prettier with every mile. . . before long, we entered the Albemarle Historic district which bounces back and forth between marshes and fields of wild pampas grass and then acres and acres of cotton nearly ready for harvest.


L.P., after two days in the car, was less and less easily bribed into happiness with huffing wind through a cracked car window. . . until we hit the Outer Banks and then all he wanted was to breathe in the ocean air.


We arrived just before dark with just enough time to take L.P. out to the beach and throw a tennis ball around. The time right after sunset was lovely.

I mean, geewhitakers, that's pretty.