A Day at the Beach

Mark usually does not love gong the beach.  I think it's mainly because he gets burned.  But a while back we went to the beach to say goodbye to some friends who were leaving.  Many of those who were there had umbrellas and were blissfully sitting under them visiting and snacking and just enjoying themselves away from the blistering heat of the sun.

Mark thought we could do that too.  He bought a couple of beach umbrellas at Walmart and on Saturday, June 30th, we packed up our beach gear, stopped at Publix for some snacks and went to Fort Lauderdale Beach.

It was a beautiful day.  The beach was pretty packed, although coming earlier as we did, (a little after 1100) we found some good parking. After we got there the parking lot filled up pretty quickly.

We stayed for four hours.  We enjoyed people watching, I read, we ate our snacks and enjoyed the water.

Even though there aren't really breakers like there is on the Pacific side, there are still waves that move toward shore.  I found it interesting that we could wade quite a ways out before it got deep where I had trouble touching bottom.  Once we were out there we could feel the ocean surges.  It is a living, heaving mass!

I loved being there.

I had chosen not to wear sunscreen.  It wasn't until we got home and showered and changed that I realized how burnt I was.  We had sat under our umbrella, but out in the water, the sun reflected off of the surface and burnt my chest and face.  Because I wore my I sunglasses I had racoon eyes!

We had been invited to a dinner party that night.  I tried to camouflage my burnt face with make-up, but after I got home, I realized how pointless it had been.  I still looked like a racoon!  How funny!

So, live and learn.  I'll be more careful next time. The interesting thing is Mark got burnt too and we were really careful to apply sunscreen to him.  The funny thing with Mark is his forearms are so brown from working outside every day at the job site.  If the rest of him got as brown as his arms, people might think he was of a different race (and who knows, maybe he is somewhere back in his genealogical line).

All in all it was a wonderful day!