The Beach

Wanting to avoid the disappointment of last week when I found one of the beach parks late Saturday only to find it jammed with cars and all street parking spots full, I pledged to try it out early Friday and see how that worked out. When I left my apartment, I noticed that it was an extraordinary day. The sky was blue instead of a dust clogged haze as it can be so many days.

As I was driving to the beach, I saw some slivers of sand and water from the main road from time to time and decided that it would be much more pleasant to drive along the beach on my way. I decided to turn off of the divided highway onto the next promising road to the left. The first couple of opportunities turned out to U-Turn breaks with a wide pedestrian crossing which I swerved in and out of in a typical tourists haze. When I finally came to a bona fide left turn I took it, confident that it would be straight forward to drive to the beach. Instead, it was a maze of residential streets that I was fortunately able to wind my way through on a combination of dead reckoning and dumb luck.

Arriving at the beach I was pleasantly surprised to find it only lightly populated with lots of parking available. I opted for parking on the pavement v. beach, to avoid getting stuck in my 2 wheel drive rent-a-wreck. The water was beautiful and of course warm – just like I like it. Like most gulf water, the wave action was lake like – you wouldn’t get rich selling surfboards here. There were a number of small shells along the beach–the delicate white bi-valves that we have so many of at home as well as scallops and some small conical shells. The water was clear and begs for a mask and snorkel. Walking down the beach, I came to a section of water pouring through a bed of rocks and into the Gulf (see photo).

I soon realized that I’d been a bit hasty earlier that morning and hadn’t brought camera, sun screen, water, towel, hat…at least I’d put on my swim suit. Not to let such minor things ruin my fun, I returned to the car, moved it onto the beach got my trusty cell phone camera and headed down the beach in the other direction. There were seemingly miles of nearly empty beach. Careful to avoid being run over by the occasional 4X4, I staked out an empty expanse and took a soak in the water. When I got ready to leave, I watched some other cars driving off of the beach and found that you could drive out pretty directly by skirting one of the beach construction sites and avoid getting stuck in the sand. I marked this beach on my GPS so I can return.