Unearthing a life.....

We have survived the weekend at the ocean with grandson in tow. It is hard to keep up with the demands of a six-year old when you are seventy-two. While he was cavorting in the Quality Inn's swimming pool in two-hour stints, I was sneaking breaks in the hot-tub/jacoozi in hopes of easing muscle soreness. Here is Al and Bookworm in the swim .... he 'swims' in a lifejacket ... a living, thrashing cork! I believe he would have been happy to spend the entire time bobbing in the pool. On Saturday he acquired the courage to cannonball into the water from the pool's edge and that immediately became the prime activity. Eventually he got in the hot-tub with me and then discovered the delights of heating his body, then scrambling out and jumping into the cold (feeling) pool.

After that first crack at the Inn's pool, I lured him into a hike to the beach. We were about a long quarter mile from the beach and the terrain was very hillocky with grass clumps on the hill tops and occasional marshes in the low spots. From our third floor balconey we could see a number of trails going ever-which-way through this ... like a labyrinth. Turned out to be a twenty minute hike each way, what with all the backtracking we had to do to avoid the marches. When we finally hit the openness of the beach it was a bit on the blustery side, so we didn't stay long ... and wove our way back to a dinner of hotdogs and cold Boston baked beans.

Saturday morning, after the Inn's Continental breakfast (they are never as good as my own), I went for a walk around town alone with my camera and took shots of interesting odds and ends of town (Ocean Shores) decor. Like decrepit old boats used for motel landscaping, graffiti on the side of a surf shop, and a memorial statue to the town volunteers who clean the beach. These will appear over the coming week on my yaFro site (use the link found here to the right side). Later in the morning we went out to the beach and I helped Allie launch and fly a kite. As it turned out, this was an activity that he enjoyed mostly in his grandpa's imagination -- and not all that much in real life. He totally lost interest in it after maybe five minutes.

The abandoned kite gave way to a horseback ride financed by Bookworm. He loves riding horses and spent much of the time bragging to the girl escorting him about his prior horse riding acheivements at the 'Corey's Day on the Farm' held each Spring at the Kitsap County Fairgrounds. More pictures of this event and the others described here will be posted on the yaFro site. I took 160 pictures and half of them should make it to posting there.

After the horseback ride, we finally got him down to the water's edge to dip his rubber boots in the surf wash. He got into this in short order and there was the usual progression of events: 1) he got a small surge that went over the top of his boots and they had to be discarded, 2) the barefoot business was going along fine till a largish swell of wash caught him behind the knees and toppled him on his butt, 3) then I end up with a dripping wet boy with sand encrusted feet looking to climb into my car for a ride back to dry clothes. He says he thought the ocean was going to 'take him' ... and Bookworm says he tried to run and swim at the same time.

After a few more hours in the pool, we went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Allie really tore into the chips and hot salsa and commented to the waiter, "This is really good catsup you got here!" He had a hamburger and later complained that the food was too spicy ... Yah .... he was cleaning up the last traces of that hot salsa as we were preparing to leave the table. I thank you, Bookworm for the weekend at the ocean with Allie. It wasn't quite what I had imagined, but it was altogether enjoyable.