~Saturday, October 8, 2022~
Day 846
I have the later sunrises to thank for enjoying such beautiful mornings lately. Since I’m a night owl, I usually sacrifice the early morning pleasures….especially the ones that start at 5:30 a.m. As I write this morning, the fog is slowly
dissipating through the trees while the sun warms everything up. Another gorgeous, warm day, at least here.
Thinking that we’d be in for the same amazing weather, we packed up a Yeti full of delicious things to picnic at Kalaloch Beach. When we arrived 20 minutes later, it was a completely different scene…..entirely socked in thick fog, yet with very little wind.
Fog is fine, wind is not. So we’re good, especially for Sadie as any beach, no matter the weather, is her favorite playground. Jeff helped build us a little windbreak with some extra driftwood that was laying around. That’s my resourceful husband for ‘ya and it really worked! Regardless, we still enjoyed a stroll and some fun stick time with Sadie. The highlight was spotting a gorgeous sand dollar, completely intact, right near the waves. Inspecting it a little further, I noticed its fuzziness on the bottom, which wasn’t still. Those tiny spines were moving.
I’ve never seen a whole sand dollar on a beach, let alone a live one. Apparently those tiny spines fall off quickly when it dies, unable to survive if out of water for more than 5 minutes. That I knew. So I promptly gave it back to the sea. A couple “did you knows”..........1. Sand dollars are not white when found alive (the one I found was an umber/grayish color), 2. You can also tell its age by the number of rings on its body, very much like trees. In any case, I consider it a lucky omen that I discovered it.
While savoring my lucky moment, Sadie quickly distracted me with her annoyance of a nearby kite. Everybody, animal or human has their quirks right? Sadie’s are kites, sky dancers (those inflatable men), blackbirds and contrails. So we try to avoid these at all costs as she goes quite “Kujo '' with them all.
As we could tell the fog wasn’t going to burn off at all, and the wind picked up, we decided to call it a day. Since we were already next to Kalaloch Campground, we opted to get water there. As I’ve mentioned before, you meet the nicest people at dump/water stations, lifelong friends even. We met a couple from Vancouver who were on a 7-week road trip through Utah, Washington and Oregon. We must have chatted for about 45 minutes with luckily no one else in line. It was such a pleasure talking to them, so much so, we exchanged information. Hopefully we stay in touch to hear all about their Utah experience (one of our favorite states).
Arriving back at our campsite in full sunshine (too bad we missed that all day), we had new neighbors in a 5th wheel, parked behind us. They apologized for parking so close, having a Dickens of a time leveling out. Not a problem. From Southern California, they’re in their 7th month of being on the road with their 5-year old son, with the husband working remotely full-time and she taking care of “home duties”. Very nice couple. Everyone was enjoying their own evenings of campfires and dinners which is always cool to see. With a slightly misty sky, the near full-moon was struggling to make its appearance, illuminating the playful river just enough.