the unbearable sunlightness of beaching
Jun. 19th, 2009 03:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishAs mentioned, Sunday was really really good, mostly because I spent it with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
uilos. We slept in, went out for breakfast at a place called the Good Egg (where I had the second-best crab eggs benedict I've ever had), came back, bummed around for awhile, applied a bit of sunscreen, and hit the beach.
The water was chill but not cold, and one barely noticed it after a few minutes. Some good splashing about and bobbing in waves ensued. (It turns out that in the ocean I can float on my back. Who knew?) We retrieved a couple of balloons that had drifted out from a party, and watched the pelicans lazily drifting up and down the beach.
And also the ghost crabs. The beach was alive with them. You could sit a little ways back from the high-tide line and watch the water, and after a minute your eye would be drawn to a bit of motion, and then you'd see little sand-colored discs with eye stalks, scuttling everywhere. All sizes, from smaller than your pinky nail to larger than a paperback. The big ones had a more yellowish tinge to their shells, making them slightly easier to see when they sat still. And they'd poke a little ways out of their hole, and wait a few seconds, and then scurry all the way out and around, dodging the beachwalkers, and into another hole. Or sometimes you'd see one duck in and then back out again and scatter a clawful of sand (in clumps, because of the rain). They're amazing to watch.
(At the edge of my vision I saw a dog bark, and then a beach twit start pounding on the sand with his shoe.uilos said he was attacking a crab. I hate people sometimes.)
After an hour or so we came back in, showered, and bummed around for a bit longer, and then decided to walk down to Island Books. The Device said it was about a two-mile walk, which seemed reasonable. So we loaded up the daypack with a water bottle and headed out. (Something fairly important is missing from our preparations. This will become relevant shortly.)
It was a good day for a walk: not too hot, breezy, bright. We gently mocked the oversized houses, attempted to stop in at the new wildlife learning center (CLOSED SUNDAYS DUE TO BUDGET RESTRICTIONS), and eventually found our way to the bookstore. I snagged a now-in-paperback copy of The Dragons of Babel, the sequel to Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter.uilos refrained from buying anything, having splurged when we were there last month.
We then walked over to an ice cream place, where she got a lime slushee and I got two ginormous scoops of ice cream in a waffle cone. Seriously, this was like a meal and a half. It was so much ice cream that they stuck the whole thing in a bowl so it wouldn't fall over. Then we walked back along the beach, and laughed at the large brown birds (thrashers maybe?) that were pretending to be sandpipers and doing a poor job of it, and admired the speckled gravel left behind after the waves rolled back, and then admired it even more when it wriggled and dug back under the sand. I have never seen so many tiny bivalves in my life.
On our return I was informed several times that my face had taken on a distinctly rubeous hue. Applying aloe made me wince but was probably worth it in the interest of decreasing the severity of the burn. Even today, my scalp is still crunchy.
Moderately painful sunburn aside, that's about what I'd like vacations to be like. The kind where I'm actually trying to relax and not Travel and See People and such, anyway.
uilos. We slept in, went out for breakfast at a place called the Good Egg (where I had the second-best crab eggs benedict I've ever had), came back, bummed around for awhile, applied a bit of sunscreen, and hit the beach.The water was chill but not cold, and one barely noticed it after a few minutes. Some good splashing about and bobbing in waves ensued. (It turns out that in the ocean I can float on my back. Who knew?) We retrieved a couple of balloons that had drifted out from a party, and watched the pelicans lazily drifting up and down the beach.
And also the ghost crabs. The beach was alive with them. You could sit a little ways back from the high-tide line and watch the water, and after a minute your eye would be drawn to a bit of motion, and then you'd see little sand-colored discs with eye stalks, scuttling everywhere. All sizes, from smaller than your pinky nail to larger than a paperback. The big ones had a more yellowish tinge to their shells, making them slightly easier to see when they sat still. And they'd poke a little ways out of their hole, and wait a few seconds, and then scurry all the way out and around, dodging the beachwalkers, and into another hole. Or sometimes you'd see one duck in and then back out again and scatter a clawful of sand (in clumps, because of the rain). They're amazing to watch.
(At the edge of my vision I saw a dog bark, and then a beach twit start pounding on the sand with his shoe.
uilos said he was attacking a crab. I hate people sometimes.)After an hour or so we came back in, showered, and bummed around for a bit longer, and then decided to walk down to Island Books. The Device said it was about a two-mile walk, which seemed reasonable. So we loaded up the daypack with a water bottle and headed out. (Something fairly important is missing from our preparations. This will become relevant shortly.)
It was a good day for a walk: not too hot, breezy, bright. We gently mocked the oversized houses, attempted to stop in at the new wildlife learning center (CLOSED SUNDAYS DUE TO BUDGET RESTRICTIONS), and eventually found our way to the bookstore. I snagged a now-in-paperback copy of The Dragons of Babel, the sequel to Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter.
uilos refrained from buying anything, having splurged when we were there last month.We then walked over to an ice cream place, where she got a lime slushee and I got two ginormous scoops of ice cream in a waffle cone. Seriously, this was like a meal and a half. It was so much ice cream that they stuck the whole thing in a bowl so it wouldn't fall over. Then we walked back along the beach, and laughed at the large brown birds (thrashers maybe?) that were pretending to be sandpipers and doing a poor job of it, and admired the speckled gravel left behind after the waves rolled back, and then admired it even more when it wriggled and dug back under the sand. I have never seen so many tiny bivalves in my life.
On our return I was informed several times that my face had taken on a distinctly rubeous hue. Applying aloe made me wince but was probably worth it in the interest of decreasing the severity of the burn. Even today, my scalp is still crunchy.
Moderately painful sunburn aside, that's about what I'd like vacations to be like. The kind where I'm actually trying to relax and not Travel and See People and such, anyway.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-19 11:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-21 06:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-20 06:01 pm (UTC)though it is fun in hurricane season, to watch the houses....
no subject
Date: 2009-06-21 07:04 pm (UTC)