"If you don't see the book on the shelf, write it." ~ Beverly Cleary
*We’re busy eating delicious Thanksgiving leftovers and chatting-up our family, so we leave you with a sunny post from one of our beach days in Carmel. Oh how we miss that place. Have we mentioned it was a delight? We did? Well, it was just that, delightful. Hope your Thanksgiving was full of thanks.
Now that we’ve been home for a few weeks, vacation seems so far away. So much has happened since our return and looking at the images of our time away makes me want to carve out a little niche to preserve what we left behind. It just isn’t possible to do that and create the same ‘we’re taking it as it comes’ attitude here at home. For some reason the To Do list looms and speaks to me in a very non-vacation way.
Thankfully Maggie is neither here nor there on the issue of To Do lists and vacations. The little nugget is just bursting with words these days and has become a heavy-duty bookworm, intently looking at all the details of every story. She is again in love with “Is Your Mama a Llama” and I’m certain that both Barry and I can recite it with our eyes closed. She’s intent on getting anyone to sit with her and read, which makes me very proud. Except sometimes I’ll be directed to her rocking chair by the point of her index finger and some harsh “mamas,” with books piled in her arms.
As long as it’s not “Is Your Mama a Llama,” I think I’ll be able to imagine that I’m still on vacation and eventually the To Do list will get done….
Right outside our cabin door there was a trail that hugged the shoreline and it might have been the biggest blessing of our whole trip. We started and ended our days on the trail because it was a perfect place for both Maggie and Sydney to stretch their legs without the constraints of a leash or a hovering hand.
One day we took the trail all the way to town, but that was a horrible move on our part because we decided last minute (as in, already halfway there) to go and didn’t bring any snacks for Maggie. By the time we reached town, a couple miles later, she was screaming as if she were starving and we felt like the worst parents in the world. Thankfully we found a bagel shop and her happy food dance ensured. Lesson learned: Always, always, always bring snacks…..and diapers.
But the evening strolls were my absolute favorite. We’d often have dinner simmering and the sunset would pull us all outside with our eyes attached to the ever-changing clouds. With the exception of a few foggy nights, and the night that we were accidentally still on a hiking trail in the State Reserve, the trail is where we’d be watching the sunset. Maggie was usually chasing Sydney wanting to put her leash on and Sydney was usually sniffing some weeds trying to get away from Maggie. Barry and I’d spent our trail walks talking about this and that, clinking our wine mugs in cheers, watching Mags and Syd.
We mostly had the trail to ourselves, but by the end of our trip we’d met a few locals that knew both Maggie and Syd by name. They’d fill us on in on some of the local haps and we’d tell them about the rain we’d left behind in Seattle. Sometimes we’d take a side trail to the top of the bluff or down to a sandy beach, but we’d always keep our eye on the setting sun as if it were a ticking clock reminding us it’d soon be dark.
The mad-dash to get back to the cabin before it was dark out, even though Maggie would often bring our head-lamp, was usually not necessary. For the colors right outside our front door were often far more dramatic than the ones we’d seen on the trail.
I guess all those Sun Salutations that Maggie and Sydney did on that first day really did something, because we were showered with sun and sunsets that were astounding. At one point I was talking with my dad on the phone and telling him that we had to go buy sunscreen because we weren’t expecting such nice weather. He said he felt so sorry for me because I had to buy sunscreen in October….I have a feeling he was being sarcastic.
But really, to start and end our days on the edge of the ocean was spectacular, there is something mightily refreshing about sea air, the crash of waves and the safety of a trail that contains both your dog and child.