tide pools

Thursday morning while I was up with the early morning swim club, Armella also got up and hiked with a couple girls down to some tide pools, about a 15 minute walk down the beach. These are some of her pictures from that morning as well as some from the next morning because it was so cool, the girls wanted to go again.

We counted 15 starfish in the first 5 minutes we were there.

Later in the day, we drove down to another rocky beach and discovered all kinds of cool and creepy sea life among the rocks.

We ended our afternoon back at the swimming beach with some boogie boards, a little too much wind and some pretty rough waves.

Part of the plan for the week was to get a chance to interview various people about their careers. The girls interviewed the boat captain, the naturalist and then we asked the very young 17 year old beach lifeguard if the girls could interview him about his job. He agreed and I've got to say I had no idea there was that much training involved to be a beach lifeguard. Basically, he attended a brutal boot camp. 400 people showed up for the initial swimming test, and 7 people were eventually hired.

So the girls are asking him various questions, and one question was "what was the hardest rescue you had to do?" He proceeds to tell us that on his second day on the job earlier this summer, a man committed suicide, shooting himself at the top of a nearby cliff and the lifeguards had to dive for his body. He was the one to recover the man's body and swim his remains to shore.

*** (stunned silence from our group) ***

Um, excuse me, Mr. lifeguard boy . . . do you not see these tiny people in front of you with their Little Mermaid swimsuits on???

All we could do was quickly change the topic "So, . . . ummm, . . . how many hours do you work each week?" (Goodness, what was he thinking!)

We ended the day back at camp. When we got back, the wind had tossed our shade canopy head over heals to the next camp while we were gone. Our whole 'kitchen' had been blown around and we had to collect all our belongings around the beach and put things back together again. But with everyone's help, we got everything back into shape and then we had a most delicious foil dinner - individual pizzas smothered with a tons of toppings, then wrapped in foil and warmed over the coals. Yum. AND if that wasn't delicious enough, the girls made two dutch ovens full of sweet, gooey, pecan covered cinnamon rolls dripping with icing! That was a better dinner than I cook in my own kitchen at home.

Did I mention I'm not so good with the dutch ovens? While all that deliciousness was being prepared, I ran the showers. The troop took along a shower tent and we hooked up a garden hose to our water source, a ground faucet nearby, and wah-la!! HEAVEN!! Anyway, everyone got to wash their hair!! I didn't know that could feel so very blissful. It was cold hose water, but it was like heaven nonetheless!

We enjoyed a campfire and at the end of the evening a few girls had to be scooped up dead asleep in their camp chairs and carried off to bed. We all fell into our sleeping bags exhausted from a very fun day.