Be With Those Who Help Your Being

And that brings us to the last day.  There was rain in the forecast again but the weather gods smiled upon us and spared our last day!  For the most part, anyway.

We woke up to this gorgeous sight.  Look at that blue sky!!  We went straight down to take full advantage.  I ended up coming back to the room a little bit later for a cup of coffee and to grab the sand toys: you bet I was going to build another sandcastle!  When I returned, the umbrellas were all set up and we were ready for a lovely last day.

I thought it would be cool to do a two pile, figure eight configuration.  It meant a little more digging, but I started so early in the day, (and had calluses already formed from the previous castle! (Gross, I know)) that it wasn't too bad.  Mom and I decided to try a big tunnel.  Last summer we did it with a five gallon bucket, although I wasn't really involved in that process so we had to kindof guess how to do it.

While I was getting shovelfuls of wet sand and walking it up to the castle, and Mom was forming the bridge around the bucket, Debby came over and dug a tunnel through the lefthand mountain!  It was fun to all three be working on it at the same time.  And our bridge worked!!

After a sandwich and beer break, we continued on with more forms and stairs.  The clouds were starting to pick up so we were trying to hurry at this point.

And then the rain came.  At first, it was just drizzling.  Enough that the beach guy came over to close the umbrellas and most people abandoned hope and went back to their rooms.  Not us!  The drizzle felt kindof nice while carving stairs, but then it picked up slightly, so Mom and Debby went up.  I waited a little longer before it started actually raining and I couldn't see through my rainy contacts and had to go up to the room.

It rained for about an hour.  Mom and Debby decided that they had had enough for one day and wanted to check out one more shopping area, while I waited for the rain to pass and went back down. The castle survived, and the bridge did too!  We think it's because the mountains on either side blocked the wind.

I went stair crazy!  The beach guy had put away all the umbrellas so I just kept carving away.  My new experiment was to try two sets of spiral staircases going down a form and they turned out pretty good.  It was Mom's idea to round the tops of the forms; I think they look a little Southwest/Tatooine-inspired.

After covering most free spaces with stairs, I sat on my towel for a while before heading up to the room.  A few people walked by and asked about the castle, but the beach was mostly deserted.  A while later I rinsed off the sand toys and made one final trek up the boardwalk.

Turned out to the a pretty awesome last day.  But it's not over yet!  After dinner Mom and I went and got tattoos!  We found a place that had good reviews and set up an appointment for the last night because you can't get new tattoos sunburned or submerged in water.  Mom and I had been talking about going together to get them for several months and we decided it would be a better story if we got them at the beach.  Pretty cool, hunh?

(photos by e.hunt, and r.hunt)