Beach Days

After too many days locked inside the house or at the hospital, I decided I needed a beach day. After all, what was I doing here in beautiful Southern California without visiting the beach? So, I announced to my brother and niece that we should have a beach day on Tuesday (this was several weeks ago already)... and I got a call first thing in the morning.

We went to my favorite beach in Oxnard which has grass and a playground and then you cross the dunes to the beach. It is the only handicap accessible beach that I know of ... with a ramp that goes far into the sand through a slot in the dunes. [there is a lovely map here to show the set up of the beach, it's copyrighted, so I am only going to point at it.]  There are several benches and tables there so that folks who are in wheelchairs but want to get sand in their food are welcome to do just that. Personally, what I love about the beach is that you can have your food in the grass and or at a table, if you must, and not worry about sand. But to each his/her own ...

After some time swinging and eating her pb&j, my niece was ready for the beach. As you can see, we are dutiful adults who indulge her every whim (ALMOST!), complying when she says "PUSH!" or wants to stop swinging. I helped her collect sticks and feathers for the dino trap she was creating for her rather large plastic triceratops. Then Barbie's dogs (sans Barbie - she must be recovering from skin cancer or something) decided they wanted to be buried in sand.

I discovered that my niece does not like the ocean. She loves the beach. She is that child who loves sand and is afraid of the ocean. I detest sand -- but I love the ocean. I love the sound of the waves, I like to see the tide come in and go out. I like to dip my toes in the ice cold water -- as I have explained to many people who balk at the ocean temp in SoCal, the trick is to keep your feet in until they go numb and then you can't feel the cold! I swear it works every time.

After a while, I left my niece and brother to the dino trap and Gypsies (all of the dogs are named Gypsy, don't ask, I have no idea why).  I started to scan the horizon for whales or other wildlife.  It is what I do at the beach besides look for treasures (we found some) and watch the waves.  I noticed the pelicans (love them) heading toward one particular site, and that there were lots of white birds bobbing in the ocean there.  Pretty soon, my scanning paid off - there were dolphins, fishing in that same area.
 
This is how I discovered my niece does not like the ocean -- she refused to even look at the ocean to see the dolphins. At one point, I held her, she wrapped around me like a koala bear, head buried in my shoulder as I described what I saw.

I pointed them out to my brother and we began to watch them in earnest.  My brother said, I sure wish I could see them surfing.  There were human surfers in the area -- and one set of dolphins had seemed to swim around them at one point.  I reminisced with my brother about our trip to Alaska, when my sister had said, Anna get the whale to come out so I can get a picture.  I waved at the ocean and a giant whale's tail came out of the water - seemingly answering my wave, and my sister snapped the picture.

And, so, a few minutes later, as we continued to watch the water, two dolphins came right at us, surfing the waves.   It really made my brother's day ... and we felt the hand of our guardian angels.
 
These are not my photos, I *borrowed* them from the internet, but they are supposedly in California. And much like the first photo, there was a surfer about to take the wave when he saw the dolphins.  He sat on this board, and at the end pumped his fist in the air obviously as taken with the experience as we had been.

Before we left, we noted about 20 dolphins going back in forth where the birds were feeding.  And at one point, there were three dolphins jumping straight out of the ocean -- it seemed like they were actually playing -- my brother thought it was a mom showing a kid tricks. 

It felt like a great big welcome home -- the one I had been waiting for.