apAdventures

posted by ARR

A stopover near Scranton, Pennsylvania to visit dear friends JR and Emily and their four boys.

posted by ARR

Here are a few more good pics from the beach portion of this road trip. We’re a little bummed to leave, especially with the last few days being misty and chilly and not ideal for playing in and by the ocean – which totally just means we will need to come back again next year. 😎

Now on to our next destination!

posted by ARR

posted by ARR

posted by ARR

posted by ARR

Wait until dark. Grab your lights and a bucket. Search the beach for crabs. When you find one, chase and squeal and scramble and eventually get it into the bucket. All cheer. Hunt for more until you think you’ve caught the biggest one on the beach. Dump the bucket and watch them all scamper away.

posted by ARR

Something I’ve learned recently about the beach: A red flag raised on the beach means no swimming, dangerous rip current activity expected. A red flag raised means that my kids are severely bummed….(at first anyway).

“If you’re dying to swim we can go in the pool”, we offer.

Silas protests. “We didn’t drive ALL the way across the country for THREE days to swim in a POOL when the ocean is RIGHT THERE!”my oldest exclaims.

“Well, then you’re just going to have to be angry at Mother Nature then. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

This anger lasted about, oh maybe 3 minutes. After breakfast we all headed down to the beach and both boys went wild in the sand, digging and building. We walked down to a recent “shipwreck.” Someone and their boat from Florida wrecked on the beach three days earlier. We threw the frisbee and football. Ivan looked for cool shells. Soon it was if no one even noticed that the water was off limits.

A few hours later a lifeguard drove up to the flagpole in his quad and started messing with the flag. I look at both kids and they have their eyes on him. At first we think he’s just replacing it, as it was quite tattered. Nope. The life guard took down the red flag and then walked out closer to the water and put up a yellow flag. A yellow flag means some rip current activity is expected. He came back to us, clearly noticing that we were all eager to know the current state of affairs on swimming. He told us it was safe to go in as long as we stayed close to shore.

The boys were in the water within seconds.

posted by ARR

posted by ARR

posted by ARR