A Day at the Beach

Figuring it would be hot, our friends and us made plans to go to the beach. We didn’t factor in the wind.

For a few weeks now we’ve been trying to plan a trip to the beach with our friends and their four girls and yesterday was the decided upon date. It was going to be warm, even at the beach, and full of sunshine. And it was warm and full of sunshine in town when we arrived. We went to a few shops in Long Beach, got doughnuts from The Cottage Bakery (mmm… Devil Dogs), and made our way to the beach to spend the day. It became painfully obvious, after unloading our cars, that the wind associated with this abnormally beautiful day at the beach was not going to let up.

After braving the wind for a couple hours, we all had sand in our eyes and every crevice it could reach and were crabby and ready to pack up and go home. Instead, we decided to load up the cars and head down to another beach, Gearheart, where we spent a full day at the beach last year. With the exception of the lack of public restrooms (we ended up using the facilities at City Hall) we probably would’ve gone here to begin with. While it was a few degrees cooler than Long Beach, the wind was much more bearable.

With our location scouted out, the kids all enjoying the water and various pools filled with aquatic wildlife, the dogs running around chasing each other, and the adults just happy the wind wasn’t blowing nearly as hard, we finally started settling out of our bad moods. Of course, all the beer we packed helped too! After we got the fire going, we roasted hot dogs (some just had theirs cooked on a small portable grill) and ate those before we all gathered around to toast marshmallows and make S’mores and watch the sunset and moonrise.

So, was this an idyllic day? Not really. But we salvaged it rather than giving up, and decided it might just be a better idea to stick with our less crowded, less windy beach next year when we do this all over again… maybe.