Travel Day #21: Pacific Ocean Beach

This day was planned for Mom, so she could have “at least one day to relax on the beach at the Pacific Ocean.” I had picked a beach closer to Hollywood, but the online reviews warned of occasional/frequent oil spills from the off-shore drilling rigs. As a result, I had looked at Google Earth and found some beaches North of them, which landed us in the Grover/Prismo Beach area. It turned out to be a really nice choice. Albeit cold and cloudy in the morning, Mom, Sean, and JT made the 300-yard trek first thing (though not early). JT came back immediately… bored. He was, however, accommodating in making a couple of trips back and forth with forgotten items. I stayed at the RV to take advantage of the power and internet connections to catch up on a few client, employee, and hockey Treasurer emails. The problem there, of course, was that every time I finished one thing, I discovered 2 more to be done. I allowed myself to succumb to the multiple text message requests from Mom to come down. I wasn’t so interested in the beach and water as I was in maybe doing some jogging.

When Mom and Sean first got to the beach, the fog prevented much of a view. Sean sat down and started digging a hole/fort in the sand, to which I added my own efforts later. As we made the hole bigger and deeper, the weather improved, so we dug for quite a while. When Sean was finally satisfied, we covered the hole with a blanket and he crawled inside with a couple of bags of potato chips. I headed out for my jog, with the Pismo Beach pier in sight, at least a mile down the beach. It was a nice, easy barefoot run down and back… enough to really tire me out, though. I also got hot enough to jump into the water, and since JT had finally joined us at the beach, too, by that point, they followed me in as well. (Mom had gone in earlier in the day.) The water was QUITE cold, but battling the waves and undertow keeps your mind of the temperature. Since my legs were worthless, I didn’t last long in the water. I was totally refreshed, though, and I think we were all glad to have experienced a little of the Pacific Ocean – I even got a good long body surf on one of the waves!

Oh, I should mention that we watched, for at least a 45 minutes, an enormous flock of birds following a bait ball of fish down and then back up the coast. Thousands of birds, at least; maybe tens of thousands. If you were in a boat in the middle of it, you’d probably be wishing you were in the Alfred Hitchcock movie, instead – there were that many birds. We were watching in hopes of seeing whales going after the same fish, but even though one of the lifeguards said he does often see whales, we weren’t as lucky ourselves.

After a long day of enjoying the beach, water, and mild temperatures, we returned to the RV where I cooked some steaks on the grill. Later, for the first time on the whole trip, we watched a movie instead of going straight to bed – microwave popcorn and everything. Mom wasn’t enjoying the movie, so she turned in early.

Yet another great vacation day.