Our Near Death Beach Excursion

On Sunday, the weather was pretty nice here and so Ryan and I decided to head to the beach. We couldn't go until about 5 or 6 because he had a home teaching appointment, but the minute he got home, we headed out. During the day, though, the weather had gone from blue skies to thick gloomy fog in every direction. Regardless, we wanted to get out of the apartment, so we went ahead to the beach.

We drove for awhile, hoping that the weather would clear up farther south, but...no luck. We ended up at a place we had never been before and that look pretty deserted. As we headed down to the sand and water, we realized that it was going to be quite a hike. In fact, it was such a steep hike that somebody had installed a rope to hold on to while descending. Imagine us in our beach get up and flip flops, trying to climb down the side of a cliff holding a rope. After a few minor falls, and a TON of dirt got on us, we were finally to the bottom. Then we had to traipse through soot and ash (literally-it was like volcanic ash!) for a few minutes before we finally got to the sand.

The beach was totally deserted by this time, and so Ryan and I walked through the surf for awhile and then he almost stepped on something that looked like this:

disgusting right?? It was a beached jelly fish, and it was MOVING! Not across the sand, but it was like a big glob of flesh that was contracting it's muscles. Barf!! And we actually saw 2 of them on this beach. I was totally grossed out. I think I've been reading too many Dean Koontz novels lately because I kept imagining that it was going to fling itself at us and suck our faces off. I think, in the future, we'll stick with the beaches we know. It was kind of an adventure, though :)