Ocean Shores 2010

We have, as a family, stayed in Ocean Shores this time of year a few times. Once it was for Denny's wedding, that took place on 4/15/06. We rent one big house with lots of bedrooms and split the cost. Then we can cook and save money, we don't have to share the hot tub with other hotel guests and we can be as boisterous as we want to be, hanging together, watching our movies, playing games, whatever. We BBQ and have a campfire usually. Rick and I, of course, have our laptops. Tony has to have his golf, Kevin and Denny their beer, us, our laptops.

Unfortunately for me this event sometimes coincides with my annual one-day special assembly of JW's in Puyallup. That's a 2-hour drive one way.

This was kind of an odd house, it had glass doors like a store would have. I think it was at an earlier time a business building. It was convenient, had plenty of room but noisy, creaky and the plumbing was loud. I think we all had at least one night with very little sleep.

It did, however, have a nice hot tub, horseshoe pits, a firepit, washer and dryer (but no soap) was close to the beach and had lots of parking.

So we had lots of room to hang and explore. Then - the unexpected happened... We had the most beautiful day we've ever had at Ocean Shores! Friday was already nice, but then Saturday was like 70º and drop-dead gorgeous! I just wish I had been able to enjoy it more.

(Don't forget to click on these pictures to see them better and please, check out the new gallery on our smugmug site!)

Joe, Keith and I went out Friday afternoon, drove around a little looking for an interesting place to explore and found the dirt road to the breakwater by the marina. We walked out on that and enjoyed ourselves.

Then the evening group showed up, Kevin and Denny in one vehicle and a couple hours later Rick, Sarah and her boyfriend, Sopha. We were finally all there. So we all piled in our cars and headed for the beach, Tony loved driving in the surf (don't worry, he sprayed off when he got back to the house, another benefit to renting a house!). Rick and I were taking lots of pictures for Tony. I was down near the water using my telephoto lens to get him from far off to right up close and the combination of moving surf, moving car and zooming lens left me unaware of my being too close to the action - Tony sprayed me! Sprayed me GOOD!! Fortunately, Rick got a shot of the wall of water just before it hit me. My camera automatically blinked a "I'm wet, dry me off" signal (actually it said "change the battery pack") so that was priority #1. All's good. I was wet and a little cold but it was kinda worth it. After that I kept telling them my share of the house rent was reduced by $50. Imagine that - he sprayed his MOTHER-IN-LAW with his jeep!

I got up Saturday morning determined to make my special assembly in spite of not having gotten barely any sleep. A 2-hour drive, then about 3 hours of assembly (I opted to stay for only half, we'd planned the ocean trip months before I found out about the assembly) then another 2-hour drive on only about 3 hours of sleep. Then I got back and the day was grand and everyone was having so much fun. But I was tired beyond functioning. If I tried to sleep it went exactly as the night before - nada. So I grumped around a bit and finally got out to play and got past the grumps. Sorry again Rick!

At just about dinner time we opted, instead of cooking, to go to the local beach and fly kites. I bought one years back but had string issues so I spent the $30 to have that fixed. Denny and Rach each bought one too. And there was a variety of smaller simple kites to try to fly (they're a lot harder than the stunt kites are to get in the air). So we flew kites for a good hour or so. Everyone got to try their hand at the stunt kites, they're a blast and Rick now understands when I talk about my kite and how fun and what a workout they are. He never flew a "2-string" kite before. He posted that in a comment on facebook and his sister, Jackie, replied "those are STUNT kites you silly! they Will knock you on your [butt] and drag you down the sand!" Apparently her husband, Gary, had been a kite flying aficionado.

So then we had dinner around 10, after a stunning sunset (9:15ish) at which point I said, when I saw it, "Grab yer cameras! come on!" Sarah was the only one that bit. We hopped in the toaster and headed back the half block to the beach we had just left about an hour earlier. But the sunset was not over the water, it was over the land. We did our best, though, to get some good silhouette shots.

Sunday AM we had a big family breakfast, then Rick, Sarah and Sopha headed for home. I had to haul people in my car so I stayed to hang with the kids some more before we'd leave. We drove out on the beach and flew kites some more. The boys took their bikes out and rode around on the hard-packed sand. There was a guy flying a stunt kite similar to ours but with these other strings that were hanging below his kite, making a neat string arch as it flew and his kite kept buzzing us, albeit unintentionally.

Which leads us into - "the rest of the story"...