My Top Two Beaches

       Our very first beach of the trip was a beach in Georgia called Tybee beach. From there we’ve visited more than ten beaches, from the shell-littered beach at Galveston Island State Park to the rocky, steep beach at the manmade Lake Pleasant in Arizona. I haven’t posted in a long time, and it’s a little late to do the post I wanted to on the Grand Canyon, so I am going to make this post on my two favourite beaches of the trip: The beach at Montaña de Oro in California and Miracle Beach at Miracle Beach Provincial Park in British Columbia. These beaches were absolutely different, so I can’t choose one over the other. But I’d like to visit these beaches again, or at least beaches like them.

   1: Montaña de Oro, California

       We spent two nights at this campground, and maybe it could have been more, except right after it came Yosemite. Two nights was enough for one day, however, and we spent that day at the beach. I can describe that day as absolutely perfect except for three things:

   a) Since Dead Horse Point we’ve been buying lots of root beer. My new favourite kind of pop. But that day I didn’t drink any because Miriam was banned for the day (I can’t remember why) and it’s hard to split a can of root beer with nobody. Darn.

   b) There was this wave that came up all of a sudden when the tide was coming in and soaked my hiking shoes. I was completely shocked. Like, it came pretty much out of nowhere.

   c) I’ve taken up the habit of reading aloud to everyone on the trip to pass the time in the car. (We were reading an excellent series involving an exceptionally strong girl who always has a bucket, a very short girl who likes to carry around thirty-seven pencils, an extremely fidgety boy who likes clean spectacles, and a boy that looks very average but is in fact very un-average. I highly recommend it.) That day I read some in the tent before bed. Miriam fell half asleep and missed a part of it including a silver seaplane and a man who is excellent at disguises. So she didn’t understand what was happening. Miriam can become pretty annoying when she doesn’t understand something, and our reading time was cut short.

       Why am I listing the imperfections?

       I can’t complain, because everything else was pretty much perfect.

       We could walk to the beach from our campground. There was a set of stairs leading down to the beach, and from the top it looked like the beach was covered with shells. But it was really covered with rocks. Not plain rocks. There was a rock of every colour: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, peach, white, black, grey, brown, multicoloured, and everything in between. It wasn’t me who had the idea that made my day. It wasn’t Miriam. It was a completely random person whose identity is unknown. When Miriam and I were combing the beach for our favourite rocks, we noticed a mosaic sort of thing made from rocks. It was a face. And we realized that that was what the rocks were perfect for- pictures! With every colour of rock at our disposal, we only had to be able to find the right ones.

       My first picture was a princess, which was fun to create with all of the amazing rocks at my disposal to make a crown. I later named her Princess Ariadne after a Greek princess with a magical string and a wine-god husband. I ended up switching the pendant she was wearing for another one, because the original rock was so pretty and I wanted to keep it. My next picture was a unicorn with an iridescent rock shard for its eye. Unicorns should be as beautiful as possible. (I named her something, but I forget it so I’m renaming her Jenny Von Hornhorse after a hastily named unicorn from a fantastic series about four princes: one with anger problems, one with ego problems, one with scaredy-cat problems and one with weirdo problems. Also recommended.) Then we ate lunch. No idea what we ate, but I’m sure it was delicious. (That was when imperfection a) happened. No root beer. Oh, well.) I then helped Mama make a colour wheel sort of thing- a circle with several wedges of different colours of rock, which was very satisfying.

       After the colour wheel, Mama and I went to explore the far left of the beach, which consisted of climbable rocks, shells, barnacles, and other interesting things. Then we went back and took Miriam on an exploring expedition of the far right of the beach, which consisted of even better rocks to climb, caves, and a high up view of our art. (And this was where imperfection b) came in: sudden wave. But anyway.) Shoeless, I returned to the art studio and designed a full-sized mermaid, which Miriam had done earlier. We called Miriam’s mermaid Mermir, so I called mine Merlu. Not quite the same ring to it, but whatever. I like it.

       Everybody was getting hungry, so we went back to the campsite to eat dinner. After dinner, we returned to the beach one more time, and I made one more picture: a campfire. And then we went back to the campsite and to sleep. (Which is when imperfection c) occurred. But I really don’t care) And so came the end of the almost-perfect day.

       Now for number two!

   2: Miracle Beach Provincial Park, British Columbia

       This place was also one of our two-night places, which there have been a lot of, actually. So, like when we were at Montaña de Oro, we went to the beach for the day. But before that, on the evening of our arrival, we went there for a short time to check it out. There were these weird lines of human made cement things, and I don’t really know how to describe them, so:

       They looked like that. There was a row of them leading into the water. We had no idea what they were for, (or had been; they looked long out of use) but Miriam and I had fun jumping from one to the next. We didn’t spend long at the beach that day, though- we left after not that long. On the way back to the campsite, Miriam and I spotted three bunnies! One was mostly grey with a bit of white, one was mostly white with a bit of grey, and the last was black. We named them- the mostly grey one we called Del, the mostly white one we called Yaz, and the mostly black one we called Carla. (Del I thought of, and Yaz and Carla came from a book.)

       When we were at the beach that evening it had been high tide and most of the weird cement things had been half-submerged in water, but the cement things were nowhere near the water now. Low tide was even more amazing than high tide. The tide pools were filled with crabs and sand dollars. By sand dollars, I mean the dead and the alive kind. Miriam and I were exploring a pool of some dead sand dollars, some of which we kept as souvenirs, when Mama told us that we needed to see something where she was exploring. Nearer to the water, there were pools and pools of live sand dollars. And even though you can’t keep live sand dollars as souvenirs, the live sand dollars were even better than the dead ones. To start, while the dead sand dollars were brownish-yellow, the live ones were solid purple. And they were covered in what looked kind of like fur. The fur stuff was constantly moving, so it looked kind of like rippling waves. The sand dollars were constantly in the process of sparkling.

       All the sand dollars that we could see were upside down because the ones that were right side up had been able to bury themselves in the sand. Miriam, Mama, and I began the task of flipping over the upside down sand dollars, which occupied me for a very long time. I only stopped when it was time for lunch. (For me, a tuna sandwich.) After that, we decided to try to swim. (At this point the tide was coming in, and it was the best time to swim.) We already had our bathing suits on, so we went into the water immediately. I didn’t get far into the water before I became preoccupied with catching crabs. I caught too many too count. Earlier that day I had also caught a few crabs under Mama’s instruction. It’s not like she’s a crab-catching master, but if you grab a crab by the sides of its shell it can’t pinch you. (The crabs were very small, though, and I tested to see if their pinches would hurt. The claws were too small to even get a hold on my skin.) Miriam joined me in crab-catching for a while. Then we went back to the cement things, which were slightly more covered in water than last time because the tide was further in. I landed badly on one and scraped my leg. I was fine, but we were pretty much done at the beach anyway, so we went back to the campsite for the day.

       That’s pretty much it, except Miriam and I later saw a different bunny, which we named Millie!

       We have a month left of the trip... I can’t wait to see where else we will go!