A Tale of Two Beach Trips

Three years ago, we were trying to go on an exciting vacation.  But we missed a ferry, and decided to find a way to amuse ourselves before going home.  We drove over to Sequim (pronounced "squim" every time I've heard it).  I thought I had heard of the Dungeness Spit, or at least the crabs, so we took a look.  It was a cool, gray August day, and what I remember most is that:

    1.  as soon as we reached the end of the half-mile trail to the beach, Rollo claimed he needed to go to the bathroom, up at the trailhead, and

    2.  while I watched D2 play with rocks, Scoot and the Caterpillar wandered into the restricted marshy area, and got their shoes stuck in the mud.

To the boys, this is a good memory, and they've been asking to go back ever since.

After scraping off the mud, we found our way to Graysmarsh Farm, where we posed in the lavender field and picked a bucketful of blueberries, which spilled in the van on the way home.

We have returned to the farm, each August, on the way home from camping farther west.  This year we made a special trip.  We picked two bucketfuls of blueberries, ten pounds in all, and it was hard to stop there.  But, stop we did, so we could make the long-awaited visit to the Spit.

It was a sunny, warm day, especially after toiling in the blueberry field, so some of us were excited about getting wet.  The water was, well, frigid.  But I let it splash up my legs, and the boys let it knock them around a bit.

Scoot tempted fate by building a pyramid upon the sand.  His brothers willingly helped build a stony fortification to protect it from the relentless waves.

And, of course, the floods came up.  The wall remained, looking like a misplaced fire ring. 

We were not alone in splashing and playing with rocks, sand, and driftwood, but we only saw one real swimmer.  We never saw him come out of the water.  In fact, we only saw the top of his head, and a bit of his back, once.  He happened to be a seal.  You wouldn't be impressed with our photographic evidence, but we saw the brown head bobbing just offshore.  We felt privileged to be splashing in the same waves. 

I'll remember Dungeness Spit more fondly from now on.