Saturday, July 26, 2014

A walk to the beach (a walk in the park, but not metaphorically)

We have been looking at the beach every day since we arrived. We watch the waves, we watch the surfers, we watch the pelicans. It is foggy, it gets a little clearer, and we still have not yet been down to the water.

So first we asked our friend Fico what would be the best way to get down. He said it is not worth it. It is damp, and this time of year it is only good for surfers. He did tell us where we can get down if we want to (near the bridge and the Lover's Park), and he did allow that it would not be that hard to get down, but he just didn't recommend it.

So we asked the hotel. They laughed when we asked, and said that they don't recommend it to guests. They said that they don't recommend anything that isn't "perfectly safe". But they told us the same route Fico and Betty did.

So we figured we may as well go.

Here is the route we took TO the beach:


Note the elevation. I think that this is correct (from Runkeeper) mainly because of what you will see below on the return trip)

So here is what we faced going down:

I always like to take photos of bridges for my Niece Dominique, the structural engineer with TXDot:

Is this a buttress bridge? I couldn't say.


But it loomed over us as we started heading down:

The walk was not nearly as bad as it seemed from above. At least the downward side. But Doreen and I have a saying, "Potential energy is not our friend" meaning that the increased ease of going down does not nearly make up for the additional pain of going up.

But for now, we just wanted to enjoy the beach.

It is a rocky, black pebbled beach:
  with very big waves. The sound that each wave made was fantastic - very musical in the way the rocks tumbled back to the water. I recorded a video and may upload it to YouTube if I have the energy.

But it wasn't really very nice down there. We certainly never felt threatened, but you wouldn't want hang out there all day.
Unless, I suppose you are a surfer.

The black building with the vertical white stripes is our hotel. You can even see our room, if you know where to look:

There was a fresh wind blowing. It was very refreshing.

Like I said, the surfers liked it down there.


A view of the bridge from sea level.


There were many gulls, this one was eating a sea urchin. (or maybe I should just say it was eating an urchin, eh Matthew?) I believe it is an immature herring gull.


But we had to head up eventually.

This is looking down, after getting up about half way

and Doreen standing above me:


Our bridge from the other side:

and finally the top:

You can see from  the Runkeeper track, it thinks we walked up a LOT farther than we walked down.

But we believe that the down walk is better.


It was a good day, and all done before noon.

We met Fico at 1:0 and had lunch with him and Betty around 2:00. More on that story later.

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