A Day At The Beach

On Sunday Tene and I went to the beach. Specifically we went to Natural Bridges State Beach, about an hour drive from our apartment.

The drive was nice - through the hills on a smallish freeway. It reminded me of a greener version of the Utah mountain roads (the trees here are so huge! and there are so many of them!)

This was the first time we went to any of the beaches around here since we moved to California. The reason we finally got around to going out was actually Tene's birthday, a month ago.

At the time we were busy and weren't able to do anything for him, so now that we had time I figured we should go have a picnic! Soon we're hoping to go to explore some of the redwood forests as well - something I've never done.

The water was so cold! Tene wanted to get a shot of me in the water with waves crashing behind me.

I refused to stay in the water long enough for that to happen, it was so cold and the waves were high. I kept losing my balance every time they crested.

There were some people at the beach - most of them were staying out of the water, or doing what I was doing - betting their feet wet and nothing else. Two guys were wakeboarding, but they also had full-body wet suits.

The beach itself, the scenery and waterscape, was just beautiful. The natural bridge was interesting, and had tons of birds on it - I wish I knew what kind they were. I thought seagulls initially, but they were darker than all the others around the area. There was also a pelican out in the sea.

We explored some tidal pools near the beach, another first for me! Mostly they had some type of mussel (or some shelled-creature, they were black and everywhere!), and not much else - but one that I found had a crab in it, and a few had some varying sized anemones.

It was a good, fun day. I learned a couple of things about picnics on the beach (individual lunch boxes are better than a shared one, for example, and sand gets everywhere), and it was nice to spend the time with Tene outside of our apartment.

I can't wait for the next adventure!