There are places in the world, where I would love to live, but the house overlooking the beach here is one of them. My senses were on overload here--the sound of the surf, the touch and scent of the sea, and the vision of this beautiful beach were incredible: so much so that I chose to do a second blog on the time we spent here. The first one had the sound of the waves rolling toward land. I hope to find one more I haven't used.
This view of the beach has a number of fishermen casting lines into the ocean with long poles. I would love to have been able to ask one of them what they hoped to catch, but asking a person who doesn't seem to be catching anything or even getting a nibble on the line would be a mistake. It would have been a bigger mistake than asking the people in Williams if they sold a sourdough start. Their reaction was classic. I don't know why I asked, but it was like I had to check for sure. They laughed when I said, "Oh, I forget that sourdough starts in the area are like a national secret."
And they are too.
One place in San Francisco boasts having starts from the early beginnings of their business in
the nineteenth century.
The fascinating part about the visit to this beach was the dramatic difference I found--those further South offer warmer water, but broken glass and Styrofoam containers and trash mar the view, and those I visited in Germany have course sand mixed with sharp shells that make it less than comfortable to walk in, unless you wear shoes. We wore shoes here, but there were a few swimmers, and some children ran about without shoes or sandals.
The only litter on the beach was driftwood like Jack looked at briefly, although he also found strange little bugs that hopped about the sand, and there were of course small lifeless crab-like things that washed upon the shore in the early morning.
The day was beautiful in spite of the fog and light rain, but I'm not all that sure that it isn't that way often here with cold water meeting the warmth of a sandy beach. Some have told me that this is basically the norm, but I still would love to be here again, in spite of the weather, although it would be fun to get some pictures with the dark blue ocean and sapphire blue sky.
To see the ocean was just another one of the things that made this trip so much fun. Unbelievable to me is that for $160-180 in diesel fuel costs and $200 in hotels, you have moments that are unforgettable.
There just isn't anything like doing something like this with family, although I do like Disneyland. Jack reminded us about that at least once a day while we were on this trip, but I'm excited that he was able to do something besides carnival rides while traveling with us, and he's done that well this year, because other than the Blackfoot Fair, we haven't been on an amusement park ride since November of '09, the time we spent Thanksgiving with all our grandchildren at Disneyland. It was a perfect trip.
But this was fantastic, and it's something I always wanted to do, and interestingly enough, my mom told me it was something my dad always wanted to do.
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