BEACH DAY Prologue

Perhaps my parents are to blame---my mom raised in Western Oregon and my father mostly in Central and Southern California and often on Navy bases--but I love the beach. Almost any reasons and sometime no reason at all is good enough reason to make a trip to a beach!  When I was young, we usually spent a day at the beach each summer with our extended Owen family during our yearly trip to Portland to visit them.  Cannon Beach and Lincoln Beach were my introduction to the ocean--sand, waves, sun, and cousins.  The cold water of the Oregon coast did not discourage us from hours of play in the water and on the beach.

From Gary and I's trip to the Oregon coast in 2015

We occasionally made trips to Southern California and enjoyed the amazing coastline and slightly warmer waters there as well.  I have a distinct memory of an overnight we spent at Pismo Beach when I was 12 and thinking it was the most beautiful place in the world.  Now I have seen a lot of beaches in different parts of the world and I think it is likely that I like most combinations of sand, water, and sun and I could not rank them in any order of meaning.

Photos of Pismo Beach from the internet

It is not surprising that my favorite book is "Gift From the Sea" written by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. It is one of the few non-religious books that I have read more than two times and it was the book I chose to share with friends throughout my life.  It is a collection of essays of sorts written by Ms. Lindbergh as she spent some alone time at a summer beach home.  They are personal and touch on topics relevant to women.  If you like such things and like the beach, you might enjoy reading this book.  (And if you are lucky, you can read it on the beach like I did one day on a family trip to southern California.  Gary knew that I was reading the book prior to our trip and offered to entertained the kids for an hour while I finished it with the splashing waves, sea gulls squawking, and the sounds of children laughing in the background. Perfect day!)

I have a quote on a board that says: "The beach feeds my soul."  So it does.

With this background, I told Gary early on in our marriage that I needed to put my toes in the ocean water at least every three years.  I have no idea how I came up with that calculation, but we have been blessed to have had some amazing experiences on beaches and on oceans which I will be forever grateful for. Gary even got a job in Hong Kong which meant we lived on islands surrounded by the South China Sea and traveled on it on many days. I also love high mountain tops, waterfalls, and amazing cities, but there is something special about where land touches the oceans of our world.

Now I present:  "Day Four- BEACH DAY"