The Showers of Blessings

 The Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “puzzle.” We use it any way we’d like!

I’m thankful to live close to the water all my life, places such as Hong Kong, Portland in Oregon, Seattle in Washington, and Orange County in California. Water is gentle, soft, soothing and yet it can be powerful and forceful.

I love walking around Laguna Lake, which is one mile from home. It takes 3 minutes to drive or 20 minutes to walk there. I also love to take day trips to the beaches. The most visited beaches are Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, and Laguna Beach. They are about 30 to 33 miles from home and take about 35 to 45 minutes to get there.

Hubby and I went to Laguna Beach on Wednesday, September 15. It had been almost two years since our last visit. It is a small city with less than 10 square miles, but there are a lot of things to do for the locals and visitors. The weather treated us well with mild sun, clear sky and a gentle breeze.

When we visited Laguna Beach years and years ago, we took many quarters to feed the parking meters. Eventually the parking meters are converted to taking credit card payment even though the coin slots are still there. When we came on the weekends, we usually circled around many times to find a parking, but on this day, we spotted many available spaces closed to the beach.

It was lunchtime when we arrived, so we went to our regular seafood restaurant right by the beach to have lunch. Hubby had a fish and chips, and I had a Fettucine Alfredo with shrimp. Hubby had three bottles of Bud Light. I ordered a Genius Taut for its bitter taste but drank only half of it because I’m allergic to alcohol. Hubby helped to share half of mine.

We visited several art galleries. I enjoyed many of the contemporary, abstract art as well as the landscape, and portrait. We saw some contemporary and inventive sculptures and also realistic sculptures.

There are three beach valley ball nets on the beach. On our previous trips, we saw people playing valley balls, but it was quiet on Wednesday. I wasn’t sure if it was a pandemic restriction or because it was a weekday.

My favorite thing is walking from the beach valley ball area to the tidepools to look at the little sea creatures in the rocky area where the ocean meets the land. This area has many pockets of sea water usually filled with snails, sea slugs, sea cucumber, mussels, sea stars, hermit crabs, and small fish. Families came with their children, who went from one pocket of water to another to look at these sea creatures.

As we walked closer to the tidepool area, to my surprise, the area was diminished significantly. Only a couple of pieces of rock were above the sand, and the lower rocks were not there. Hubby saw my puzzling look, saw the rows and rows of tire tracks on the sand, and said, “It seems like they brought in truckloads of sand.”

“Why did they cover the tidepools with sand?”

The remaining couple pieces of rocks above the sand didn’t collect too much water with sea creatures in them. I was somewhat disappointed. The sand level looked like higher than what I remembered. It could have been between the timing of the tide and the timing of adding sand to the beach. The tide was coming in and the waves were high by the time we were there. The tidepools could be under the water. The more I think about that, the clearer I see those tidepools under the water.

I had fun taking tons of photos and videos of the waves pounding the beach and the rocks. There were two surfers, one on the left and one on the right of the video.

.

Thank you for reading.

Have a wonderful weekend!

SoCS – Puzzling about the Tidepools

.

.