Sunday, August 15, 2010

That wave was taking my pants off!

After our late night last night, and such a busy schedule so far this
week, we slept in until noon today! It was pretty cold last night,
toques might be in our future sooner than we had hoped. Evan claims to
have seen his breath!

Today was the chilliest one yet, and still, we decided to go to the
beach. Nauset beach, the one with the light house that we saw earlier
in the week, was full, but farther down the road we came upon Coast
Guard beach, which someone had told me was one of the top ten US
beaches. It had space in the lot so we parked and rode the shuttle
trolley to the beach.

It was the wildest surf I had ever seen. Evan said it looked like the
surf in Hawaii. Waves were cresting over peoples heads! Most people
were on the sand, soaking up the UV coming through the clouds. There
were some who built forts against the incoming tide, and a few brave
kids running in the shallow surf.

The water was so cold that our feet burned and ankles ached as soon as
we got in. On the third try we were in past our knees. Evan's feet got
knocked out by the next one, and he was sprawled out on the wet sand
before he knew what had hit him. Laughing, he then proceeded to take
me by the hand and make me get soaked too.

Once we were hit by a few waves, the excitement overpowered the cold,
and we were soon running and jumping into and over the crashing cold
surf. We really did need to stay close to each other. The waves were
so strong that you'd be pulled under if not for the hand you held.
Sometimes we both ended up with sand in our pants and salt up our noses!

We ventured only about 3 meters from the shore, and tried to stay in
front of a guard tower, but got "sweeped by waves" so we couldn't go
where we were aiming, and sometimes the waves retreated with such
force that they dragged you back into the water, or took you to your
knees.

We did this for about an hour and a half. I noticed it was mostly
French canadians in the water with us ("beaucoup de canadiens" says
Evan). Crazy Canucks indeed!

Exhausted and covered in goosebumps we returned, and had long hot
showers, and made a huge fire (started with a flint--a first for me!).
We made a big veggie and hotdog foil meal with tea and hot chocolate
and s'mores for dessert made entirely by Evan. (he's such a fast
learner!)

Next lesson for him was in wool dyeing. We used food colouring and
vinegar and heated the mixture over the fire. We used red, blue,
yellow, and green for one pot, and blue and green in the other. The
colours blended nicely, and the roving now hangs at our site drying.

We kept some white, and we had an after dinner drop spindle lesson.
Evan is pretty good already, and still seems to love fluffy things,
maybe too much! He's not the only one. Google "it's so fluffy I'm
gonna die" you can see lots of people have the same problem.

Tomorrow we are off to Boston for the day, then camping in Gloucester
for the next two nights. We plan to see as many museums as we can, and
will see Harvard and MIT too. Evan has been practicing his
pronunciation of "Massachusetts Institute of Technology" in
preparation of our visit. It is quite a mouthful.

Not sure if there is Internet at the next site, but we will post when
we can.

Sent from my iPod

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