More from the Beach

I've never been at the beach during a full on hurricane. I get the heck out of dogde before it gets there. But, I've been there in the days leading up to a hurricane. That is a lot of fun, I have to tell you, especially if you enjoy being beaten senseless by the water. Which I do. :) This year we had a little excitement as we got to see a wimpy little tropical storm blow by.

It turned out that most of the rain from the storm fell well inland; all we got was a little drizzle and some wind. By "some wind", I mean a brisk breeze (circa 50 mph) that could make you lose your balance and nearly blow over if you're not careful. A brisk breeze that fully exfoliates the bottom half of your legs if you're standing on the sand. Seriously, it was a mighty wind for us land-locked folk and yet, not even close to being a hurricane at that point.

A few of us walked out on the end of the island that afternoon to take a look at the view. I took this picture while we were out there and I swear, if it were not for the clouds (and the fact that I know where I took it), I might have thought it was the Sahara.


You can see the sand just flying by in this picture. It looked pretty cool. The other entertaining thing the wind did was to tear off the tops of the waves out on the water. Just as a wave would get ready to break, the very top would get blown backward, creating this almost eerie mist of water over all the waves. This isn't a great picture of it, but you might be able to see what I mean:


My favorite annual event at the beach is our evening sail. We've managed to go each of the four years that we've been at this particular beach and I hope we continue to do so. The catamaran leaves from a local port and sails out toward a nearby lighthouse during sunset. It's a beautiful sail, and I just love to be out on the water like that.


This year we saw a pod of dolphins (or porpoises, I can never tell the difference) which was totally awesome! Sadly, my camera battery had died so I'm waiting to see the pictures Jackie took of the dolphins/porpoises. (The above picture of the sailboat sails are about all I was able to get before my camera shut itself off). The dolphins were pretty close by, though, and frolicked around the catamaran a little bit before continuing on their way. It's always fun to see them up close.

The Nature Walk of Plagues

I have oodles of pictures to post about my annual beach vacation, but I think I'll start with our afternoon at the aquarium. After what seemed like about five years of renovations, the local aquarium on the island where we stay was finally reopened. I typically don't love aquariums, but given the swirling tropical storm overhead that prevented us from actually being on the beach, we decided to spend an afternoon at the new and improved aquarium.

They definitely did a nice job on the expansion of the aquarium itself. I used to go here almost annually with my family as a kid, so I have some vague recollections of what it used to look like. But, now there's a nice large ocean tank with plenty of fun fish:



Technically, the above lionfish was not in the large tank, but it still qualifies as a "fun fish" in my book. Look at him--he's got all kinds of crazy tendrils! Actually, the lionfish was in a tank with an eel:


One of my favorite things was this octopus. I thought it would be bigger when I saw the sign for it, but it's still cool even if it's small.


There's the obligatory jellyfish tank (though nothing rivals the one at the Monterey Bay Aquarium):


Outside the aquarium building itself there is an open area that overlooks the sound and surrounding marshland. There's also a short nature walk. The wind was blowing in relatively fierce gusts that day, so even in the normally quiet bay we could see some small waves. Most of the marshland was devoid of any evidence of wildlife, but I'm guessing all of the cool birds and turtles were hunkered down to ride out the storm. Grant, Chad, Brent, and I decided at this point to venture out onto the nature trail. I should warn you up front that on this particular day I was wearing a skirt and some cute little sandals. I didn't really think when I started the walk that this would be something I shouldn't do in cute sandals. There should have been a sign or something.

Grant picked up a laminated handout at the start of the trail that detailed some of the things we presumably could see along the walk. (At least, that's what we thought it was for.) The first labelled stop was about poison ivy. We didn't think much of it at this point, although we laughed that they would choose to begin with a discussion of poison ivy and how to identify it. I just figured that there was probably some poison ivy nearby and they didn't want children playing in it. We continued on up the trail.

At the summit (and by summit, we're talking about a total change in elevation of maybe 15 feet?) the boys stopped to ponder the great expanse of land they had conquered:


After conquering the peak of the hike, we continued on around the back side. Later documented stops along the trail included discussions of snakes, swarming insects, and alligators. It was around the point of the alligator discussion that I really started to wonder exactly what kind of messed up hike of plagues we were on. I mean, this hike was for families and school groups. And they're not pointing out the local vegetation or the turtules or the egrets.....they're talking about man-eating alligators and swarms of swamp insects. Not to mention that I didn't consider how saturated the ground would be after all the rain and we were basically hiking through mud (in my cute sandals).

Finally, we were nearing the end of the hike. There was one bridge left to cross over some algae covered marshland and then we would have completed our Nature Walk of the Killer Attack Creatures. Grant went first over the bridge. About halfway across he yelped (in a very manly way, I assure you). Turns out the bridge was a "floating bridge" which didn't so much float as it sank beneath the algae covered swamp for the middle ~3 feet of the bridge. We had to either walk through (or leap over) the stank green "water" in the middle of the bridge or turn back around the way we came. All the boys had no difficulty powering across the bridge. But, you might recall, I had on cute sandals. Mud I can remove from my sandals, algae and smelly swamp water simply would not do.

So I did what any self-respecting woman would do. I took off my sandals, held them up in the air, and ran across the bridge leaping over the underwater section. I can think of no better way to end the nature walk of alligators, swarming insects, and snakes than to take off my shoes and leap over a swamp on the way out.

Happy 4th!

My brother arrived last week for another summer of fun-filled working and general hanging out here with me. Sadly, I've been so completely drowning in work that yesterday afternoon was the first time I have been able to actually do anything fun with him. For nearly a week, I saw him at breakfast, had him drop me off at work, saw him at dinner, and saw him again when he popped his head in my room to say good-night. And I feel terribly about it. So I was glad yesterday afternoon to be able to take half of a day off to hang out with him.

We made it our goal to see some fireworks for the Fourth of July and despite there being fireworks all over the place around here, it took us the entire afternoon to figure out what to do. Finally we settled on going to a pro soccer game at the local Big Stadium where they claim to have the best fireworks display in the state. Never having seen a live soccer game before (or even one on TV in its entirety), I wasn't sure what to expect. At the very least, we ended up with some good stories to laugh about.

I was silly enough to pay attention to what was written on the soccer team's website about avoiding traffic delays and we arrived at the game 1.5 hours early. There were very few people there when we arrived, but we did get to see some of the pre-game entertainment. In the parking lot were crazy men on motorcycles doing stunts.

Those motorcycles turn out to be quite loud. We watched for a little while and then headed in to our seats. We still had well over an hour to kill, so we walked slowly around the nearly empty stadium (twice!) to see the sights and finally went in search of some dinner. Once in our seats and fed, we proceeded to watch the team warm up. You cannot tell in this picture how bright and sunny it was at this point, but trust me. It was a beautiful afternoon.

But once the game started, the skies opened up and the predicted "scattered showers" dumped down upon us. I think that some meteorologists have a different definition of 'scattered showers' than I do. This particular experience was not dissimilar to someone standing above you with a large bucket of water that never empties. The game went on for about 15 minutes in the pouring rain before the powers that be finally delayed the game and suggested we seek shelter on the inside concourse.

45 minutes (and one crowded lap around the stadium) later, the game resumed. Still in the rain, but this time with added occasional lightning. Maybe it was supposed to be ExtremeSoccer, and we just didn't get the memo. Anyhow, at halftime we were entertained with one of the funniest things I have seen in a very long time: Mascot Soccer. Mascots from local universities, sports teams, Chick-fil-A, and even the local aquarium competed in a little 10-minute game.


Great hijinx ensued. The two Chick-fil-A cows got into a little tiff, there was a 8+ mascot pileup at one point (which I attribute to a distint lack of peripheral vision in those huge costumes)... But I think that the Octopus mascot (the light purple guy with extraneous arms around waist level, in case you cannot tell) was by far my favorite. The poor guy had quite the turning radius and I think was somewhat soccer-challenged as a result.


The real soccer game finally ended late in the evening (we won!) and we eagerly awaited our original purpose: the fireworks. Eight (or at least it felt like 8) patriotic songs later, we got our wish.

So, in closing, I hope everyone out there had a happy, entertaining, and dry 4th of July this year. :) Ours was good, just not terribly dry.