By the time we woke up the next morning, we were ready to head for home. We knew we had plenty of time to pack our stuff because we didn't have to be out of the site until 11am, and we'd done this many times before. And with only four of us on this trip, we could once again pack the car without too much planning, arranging, or thinking and just pile it up.
I was a little sad to miss the Sunday morning worship service that is offered only to the campers at SWC, but I knew the girls were far too tired to walk down and all the way back up that hill again this morning. I was also sad to see that the shower trucks had packed up and headed home last night. I so love taking a shower in the morning, but today I am just out of luck.
When we drove down here on Wednesday, we'd planned to stop by the beach on our way back out. There are huge sand dunes that always catch the girls' eye whenever we head down here or to the aquarium. The beach is totally not my thing, but the road back to the freeway dead ends into a beach parking lot just under the overpass, so I promised them we'd make a quick stop there today.
We had a nice breakfast and began to pack very slowly. It was once again really wet today and the tent, chairs and wagon were all pretty damp this morning. On each of the days we've been here, it's been foggy like this, and then somewhere right around 10am, the sun just appears out of nowhere and the sky is completely clear within 15-20 minutes. So, I figured we'd just wait for that to happen and let the tent dry itself out. Bailey's family was busy using towels to dry their tent off, but it would have been a ton of work by myself, and I wasn't convinced it would make the tent dry enough to pack it away for good without worrying about mold.
10 o'clock came and went and still there was no sign of the sun anywhere. Then 10:30, and then 11:00 and still no sun to be seen. Not even a hint of where it was in the completely clouded sky. Obviously this plan wasn't going to work. Luckily, I had brought some black garbage bags with me, so we just took everything that was wet (including the rolled up tent) and threw it all in garbage bags. I piled everything loosely in the car and decided I'd just set it all up again once we got home and let everything dry out that way.
It was all piled in by 11:30, so we said our goodbyes and hopped in the van. We'd heard that the 11am timeframe is just a formality and that no one actually comes to make sure you're out of there in time. I guess others have heard that, too, because when we were pulling out I noticed at least half-a-dozen tents still fully setup. It's likely they're waiting for the sun like I was.
Bailey (pink fuzzy hat - covering her bright pink hair, which K loved!), Jennifer (white hat), and the girls. I tried to clean K's face last night before bed, but she still has a noticeably orange tint to her face and although you can't really see it from this picture, her eyes looked a bit like she was an 80's rocker who'd partied too hard the night before.
We took a few minutes to drive around to the different campgrounds, noting their colors, ground slope, and placement and making mental notes for the next time we come down here to camp. It was good to see where some of the other areas are since it's a little hard to tell from the cartoon map they post online.
By the time we finally got down the hill, we were already hungry for lunch. The Black Bear Diner was calling my name again, and although there was a little bit of a crowd there waiting for us, I think we got pretty lucky considering it was Sunday lunch. After lunch, we headed straight to the beach, cold as it was here. It was still in the mid-50's with that same ferocious wind that had been plaguing us all weekend, so we wore our jackets the entire time we were there. At least we won't get sunburned this way - if the sun ever comes out, that is.
As is customary at just about any place my girls are at any time, the first thing on the docket is to find some animal to obsess over. It is briefly the seagulls, who are all in some form of maturation that makes each one a unique blend of colors (in case you didn't know, our common gulls are gray or brown and often spotted when they're juveniles, and then they turn that trademark white with a gray neck when they are adults). But after one trip down to the water, their focus suddenly shifts to crab skeletons - loads of them. There are traditional and sand crab skeletons by the hundreds down there (mostly the latter), and although A will claim anything that looks more or less like a complete animal, C is a purist and will only keep the best of the best of the traditional crabs.
poor guy
a winner!
looking...
C's collection. While her sisters are hunting for crabs, C stays by my side nearly the entire time, talking endlessly, occasionally shrieking at an 'adorable' something or other, and making requests to K, who seems to be hunting on her behalf. At one point, C decides she going to start a "crab collection" and put each set of crabs in a bag and label it with the beach's name she found it at. This worries me greatly since some of these crab's shells aren't cracked which means there might still be meat in there. Ew. At home I casually offer for her to put them outside to 'dry out' after a few days in the plastic bag, and then I feel extremely guilty at not having mentioned to her to protect them somehow from neighborhood birds and cats and all of them are gone when we get home. :(
sand crab bodies, looking very decorative
A's collection, buried in 'shoe-shaped' holes that she places her shoes over to hide them from passers-by
At one point, the girls actually even found a live sand dollar. Thanks to Sheri for letting us know that they have stinging feet, so they stuck it in a plastic bag with some water and sand instead of holding it for too long. We'd seen live sand dollars before, looking all purple and fuzzy, but I wasn't quite sure if this one was alive at first because it seemed odd to catch one on the beach in the afternoon. But sure enough I watched as it very slowly buried itself in the sand in the plastic bag. It was slow, but definitely noticeable.
Found the picture of the sand dollar!
We ended up being at the beach a whole lot longer than I thought we'd be. It's been about 4 hours by the time we finally leave here. The sun finally did come out around 2:30pm (and the temperature actually reached 60 degrees!), and I'm glad I didn't sit around waiting for it. There's actually quite a few people at this beach today (Seaside), including a couple of kids in actual swimsuits, although most are like us and just enjoying the water from a distance with our layered clothing on.
I noticed these guys a little ways down the beach from us. At least the water was showing off and looking extra beautiful with all that wind.
We also were entertained for quite some time by four guys who were apparently trying to learn how to surf. A couple of them eventually nailed it (and were SO excited about it!), but their falls left me giggling several times. If nothing else, it makes me feel a little more confident about maybe trying to learn to surf someday - hey, I couldn't look much worse than that, and they were having fun! And it also makes me hope that there isn't someone sitting on the beach filming me and posting it on YouTube for everyone else to laugh at. Sorry guys!
I thought briefly about playing a Beach Boys song or maybe the Hawaii-5-0 theme song to the video because of the loud wind noise, but you guys always say you like the kid's comments, and I actually thought their comments were pretty funny on this video and especially descriptive of our day on the beach. You can clearly hear C mocking the surfers in the beginning, followed by her squeals of excitement over a nearby bird, and then some heated discussions over 'crab-trading' and why C's were obviously superior to whatever she was being offered. Besides all the funny ways these guys fell off their boards, I liked the excited fist pump by the guy on the yellow board at the end, and if you had the volume all the way turned up (not recommended), you might just catch the guy on the red board yell "I'm up!"
Once we finally got back home, I pulled everything out of the car and proceeding to pretty much recreate our entire campsite back at SWC (including the annoying wind - I had to weight the tent down with the bags of library books because it kept blowing over). The tent was in the street, the sleeping bags were on the sidewalk, the chairs were in the driveway, and for a minute I entertained the idea that we could just sleep out there for the night. But after a few hours in the toasty sunshine, I was convinced that everything was dry enough to pack away, and I was completely ready to sleep in my own bed and use my own shower.
Home again, at least for a few more days....
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