Life's a beach!

I love the beach! Unfortunately, the closest beach is around 450 miles away, so I don't get there all that often. And in fact it has been several years since we last visited the beach. Not counting our time on an island during our cruise of 2003, the last time we went to the beach was 1997. 9 years?!?! Time to do something about that!

So we did. Last week we spent several glorious days at the beach at Gulf Shores, AL. Just the two of us - no kids this time around. Beautiful white sand. Rolling waves crashing into the beach. Seashells, seaweed, fish swimming by. And of course airplanes constantly flying by pulling advertising banners (Tracks: Ride the Wild Woody!) We spent several hours out there each day, and then on a couple of nights we went back to walk along the beach around sunset.

I love to be at the beach, hearing the waves come in and out. Or riding the waves so much that at night you can feel yourself still going up and down, up and down. Or just watching the people go by. It was like heaven on earth.

One problem: the sun. Yes, I wanted it to be sunny and hot. And it was. But Monty of the Fair Skin evidently doesn't tan quite as easily as he once did, which never was quite that easily to begin with. And evidently all those claims of sunscreen makers of their product being waterproof after 8 hours doesn't quite hold up. I had on SPF 45, and still got quite a bit of sun on our first day. Which made the other days a bit tricky to enjoy myself and not turn the same color as Hardcastle and McCormick's Coyote sportscar.

We got a beach umbrella and some more sunscreen. And we both would apply sunscreen heavily each time we got out of the water. Problem solved, for the most part. Except that both of us were already pretty red. But that didn't slow us down or keep us from having a good time.

On a good note, three good-looking college girls in small bikinis (turns out there were several such girls at the beach) stopped to talk to me. Of course, it was mainly to comment on how my back looked sunburned and whether I might be sore the next morning. But hey, I'll take any attention I can get!

With how much fun we had, and how nice the area was, I don't think it will be all that long before we visit again!