When Life's a Beach

I have heard that 50% of the US population lives within 50 miles of the coast.  There were certainly no coastline in Kansas so for the first time in my life I am one of them.  It is wonderful.

We had a three day weekend in July so Sandy coordinated all of us to head up to Manchester-by-the-sea for a day of fun in the sun.  In addition to just sun, sand, and water, we also have a classmate (Jordan) with enough beach game to host a children's camp.  Since we are basically children, it was perfect.  We played volleyball until the sand burnt the bottoms of our feet.  Turns out we have some players in the class.  One of my main skills in volleyball used to be my height (5'8" when I was 13), compared to the guys I am a shrimp who can't jump.  It was a blast.

Setting up volleyball on the beach

We also picked up a new game called spike ball.  It is like playground foursquare with a smaller ball and teams.  It was fun to play like kids and not worry about school and the two projects due the next week.

In addition to just classmates, a bunch of SO's (including mine) and a baby joined us.  Two weeks before class started, a classmate's wife (Joey) had a baby.  We get to see the baby grow over the next few years and experience lots of first, including his first trip to the beach.  

The biggest surprise of the trip is that no one was sunburned!  Eight hours of playing and drinking in the sun and the only sunburn was because Amy road down in a convertible with the top down. 

But one day was clearly not enough. We get 10 days between summer classes and orientation.  Some folks headed home, some traveled the world, we did not.  We took a few days in NYC to see the sites and eat some pastrami (Katz Deli is AMAZING).  Once we got back Jordan (owner of summer camp games) coordinated a trip up to Long Sands Beach in Maine. 

Beautiful Long Sands Beach (photo credit to Sera)

This one was a little further away (1.5 hours) but totally worth the drive.  Long Sands Beach is in a cute beach town right on the water.  Since we went on a Wednesday (I love summer vacation!) most of beach was empty.  We were free to play with the stand up paddle board, volleyball, spike ball, and general beach fun. 

We love our volleyball (photo credit to Sera)

The weirdest thing happened in the middle of the afternoon.  It looked like there was a fog but instead of coming in off the water it looked like it was coming up off the sand.  You couldn't see 50 feet straight ahead. Any ideas about what caused that?  So we hung out under out EZ-UP and made PB&J while we waited for it to calm down.  There was time for a round of paddle board relays before we had to head home.  

As we were packing up to leave something amazing happened.  The beach turns into a dog beach after 6 PM.  We got to play with an eight week old lab puppy and a whole group of "mini Lassies" there playing fetch.  We used up our phone batteries playing music otherwise I would have a bunch of puppy pictures to wrap up this post.  Instead I have to use the one I found on google.

Almost as cute as the puppy we played with