Beach trip

A few days ago we paid a visit to the ocean, specifically Pomponio State Beach, about 12 miles south of Half Moon Bay. I love the San Mateo County beaches, the beaches I grew up with, but I understand that they aren't for everyone. Especially since we just went to the beach in Santa Monica a week ago, and it was warm and clean, a huge expanse of beautiful beach right out of a movie or a commercial or something. The northern California beaches are more rugged. Cold, windy, foggy -- they're gorgeous, but they're not to everyone's taste.

I was glad, though, that the boys liked this beach anyway. They did complain about the wind and the cold, but not excessively. No swimming this time, though we did do some wading. No swimsuits, and in fact as you can see, they wore their sweatshirts for the first time on this trip. But they still had a blast, as did we all.

A whole lot of gulls were congregated near us, apparently having some sort of staff meeting. At one point, for no reason that we could discern, they all decided to fly away and then return. It was quite a sight.

We built sand castles, but the tide was coming in, so every time we started building, an even higher tide would rush in and wash it away. We all got a lot wetter than we wanted to, but it was fun. And we had lots of towels, and I had clothes for the boys to change into, so no worries.

Here and there on the beach were crab legs and other bits that the gulls had obviously decided weren't worth eating.

I know this sounds a little odd, but the sight of these legs made me hungry. Fortunately, at 4 pm we packed up our stuff and drove a little further down the road to Duarte's, where I could order a crab melt sandwich. Artichoke soup is always a favorite, and then there's dessert. The boys claimed to be full, but Aunt Nonny ordered her olallieberry pie with ice cream, just in case somebody wasn't telling the truth.

Good call, Nancy!