Paradise found.
Like lumps of coal we slept until 10 AM. Warm toast, eggs, and a selection of meats and cheeses certainly goes well with sipping thick coffee. I, of course, had to taint my coffee with some hazelnut coffee creamer. It softens the harsh edge much like whacking your thumb with a ball-peen hammer wrapped in velvet.
With breakfast broken we piled in the car like clowns to a volkswagon. Actually 2 ugly bugs. Opa, Oma, Uncle Kayem and Auntie Emkay led the way to Paradise Beach and we followed hoping not to get lost. This beach is a wonderful hideaway half way between Courtenay and Campbell River.
We arrived when the tide was at its lowest and the beach easily extended a quarter mile from the picnic area. The tide was going to take all afternoon to creep up and swallow the beach. The kids immediately dropped everything they were carrying and made a B-line the water’s edge. Many times we had to dodge around tide pools and stop and dally with the sand dollars, shells, and seaweed festoons matrixed on the sand. Upon reaching the ocean, Opa found an old crab carcass and received squeals of delight and dread as he marionetted the carcass to the likes of a Godzilla decimating Tokyo.
A half hour later, our wave hopping and fish spotting was interrupted with the arrival of air mattresses. Nature was immediately replaced with lolling lazily on the periodic waves. Just a moment ago the kids were hopping, runing, and swimming like minnows. Now, they lay as if just completing 12 hours of hard labor.
Eventually even the air mattresses lost their appeal as did the waves and open ocean. We let the tide chase us back in by building sandcastles on a dry sand bar only to have the tide bring on destruction. With each battle inevitably lost, a new site found, a new line in the sand drawn, and a new indestructible castle built.
Soon tiring of defeat, the troops gathered for lunch and then off to an unsuccessful geocache. Dad pigheadedly hauled the kids of to a mile long hike down the beach to ‘The Potter Shack‘ where no cache was found that day. With testament to headedness-of-pig I hope to try again tomorrow. As the day waned and the tide flowed, we were squeezed from the beach like so much sunscreen.
The day completed with ribeye steaks, spinach salad, and McWilliams wine.