verbatim: Beach Double-Header

Did I tell you that Andy is off this week? And that the weather has been nice so far? Wheee!

Yesterday we went back up to Long Beach in Gloucester, which is such a pretty beach. I was cursing the Weather.com folks when we arrived, because they promised it would clear up by 10am, but at 10:30 the sky was still completely overcast and threatening. It was even sprinkling a bit. But we parked and got out as soon as we saw that the waves were incredible—so incredible that there were a couple dozen real surfers in wetsuits doing their thing! I'd never seen that before in these parts. I didn't have my camera, but someone named Matthew I. apparently did—granted, this was taken on Saturday, but this is exactly what it looked like when we were there:

As we sat and watched the surfers and marveled at their balance and agility, lo and behold, the sky did indeed begin to clear. The next thing we knew, it was an exquisite day, and we were almost the only ones on the beach! The kids had a blast taking in the waves—both with and without their boogie boards. So, thanks to Hurricane Bill, we had a great time. In the middle of the afternoon, however, we saw a menacing black cloud moving in, so we packed up and made it back to the car just as it began to absolutely pour. Nyah nyah, Weather.com!

Today promised to be a picture-perfect day from start to finish, so we decided to head even farther north, to Ogunquit, Maine. Andy and I had both been there many times—in fact, Andy spent his summers there until he was about 7—but only once together. (That was an ill-fated trip in 1999, when Steph was a toddler and Pete was a cranky infant. We were supposed to be up there for several days, but for a number of reasons we ended up staying only one night and then high-tailing it back home.)

Ogunquit allegedly means "beautiful place by the sea" in the Algonquin Indian language, and it sure lives up to that name. The beach is huge and flat and pretty. The water is always pretty cold, but it's clean, and today the waves were still quite powerful from ol' Bill. In the afternoon, though, the tide came in a lot faster than we would've expected it to, so suddenly there was only about 15 feet of dry sand available for the whole length of the beach! It's just as well we left when we did, because at bedtime tonight we saw that Julie had a little bit of a sunburn as it was.

We poked around a bit in the little shops in town and then went over to Perkin's Cove to sit out on the rocks at the beginning of the Marginal Way. We had originally planned to get fried clams at Barnacle Billy's, but it was only about 3:00, so we got ice cream instead and then headed home.

No, I don't have photos from today, either. I was too busy digging a moat for Pete's castle to take any, so you'll just have to use your imagination.