Thoughts on the Beach, Part 3

There are a lot of things I absolutely love about the beach, one of them being that I can walk on the beach and not care how far or how long I walk. When I walk at home, I usually give myself goals, like "2 times around the block". Or if I add running in the mix, it's usually something like "keep going until I reach that brick house with the black shutters" or something to that nature.

At the beach, though, I'm so mesmerized by the sound of the waves or the innumerable shells on the ground that time and space just don't matter. But, given that I like to know how far I go, I had Patrick measure the distance (he didn't mind since he was running and wanted to know himself how far he'd gone).

Here was the view to the north from our condo. You can see the Surfside Beach pier sticking out into the Atlantic in the upper left of the picture. I decided to walk to that pier one morning, thinking it wasn't too far. Over an hour later I was back at the condo sweaty and hot, though very happy with such a wonderful morning walk. Patrick clocked it and it was over 2 miles one way to the pier. I was pretty proud of myself for walking/running 4+ miles, since it had been YEARS since I've accomplished something like that.


This is the view to the south. You can see the Garden City pier here. It was about a half mile to this pier. We walked here quite a bit with the kids, who usually ran the majority of the way. We watched them tire their little tails out running around like banshees and the awesome thing was is that they had a great time doing it.


We took the kids out on the pier a few times and they enjoying seeing our condo from the ocean's point of view. Our condo is the first tall building you see as you look from left to right.



We were on the 14th floor so that if you were sitting in the living room and looked out the window, all you could see was ocean. It was absolutely stunning. Since I spent a lot of time in the condo while Evan was napping and the others were enjoying the sand, I was able to look down from the balcony and watch the family enjoy sand and beach. It was nice to catch a few quite moments in the room, listening to the sound of the ocean and the faint sounds of children laughing while I delved into my book. I didn't mind being up there while they were down in the sand. Really.


Evan was an early riser in the mornings. At home, he would be fitful around 5:30am then go back to sleep until about 7. At the beach, the same thing happened but he was fitful in the same room with his brother and sister. So, my mom would get him out of the kids' room and cuddle him for a bit until I nursed him. At least one of the mornings she was there, she took Evan out on the beach in the stroller before sunrise. I tell you what, I can be extremely forgiving getting up at the crack of dawn and loosing precious sleep at the beach because it's the beach. I just hope my mom felt that same way...