At the Beach!

Once a year, we escape the snowey Northern Indiana weather for a week at the beach. My daughter and her husband meet us at a condo where we share the off-season wonderful rates to rent a multi-room suite high above the beach and spend a week soaking in the hot tub and walking the beach.

We left early Christmas Morning and drove the motorhome south. It was great to see the mountains again, even though they were cold and snowey. We spend Christmas night in a motel in Tennessee, where I used the microwave to warm a pre-packed dinner for my favorite birthday guy. A cornish hen roasted with rosemary and garlic butter, baked potatoes and a delicious salad made up our dinner, served with a nice bottle of chardonney. Cakes are out for me, and he's kind enough to go along with the wheat-free lifestyle too, so his birthday cake was a warmed dish of rice pudding, topped with coffee creamer and birthday candles. There was a change of hotels from our original plan, when they closed our original hotel for repairs, so Kim talked the management into finding us another, newer, nicer hotel, where we had a set of rooms so new they still smelled of fresh paint. We're on the 19th floor and the view is just beautiful. We keep seeing flocks of pelicans flying along the beach, BELOW our balcony. What a view!
Just a couple hours after we checked in, we saw two dolphins cruising by off the beach. They looked like they were just slowly rolling along, out for a stroll in the evening. Just gorgeous. We had a great seafood dinner last night at the restaurant next door.

So today, we drove up to the nearby State Park to walk the beach to see what had washed up onto the beach. It was fun to watch the shore birds running through the surf. We found lots of broken shells, one shark's tooth, and a sea anemone. Jim got stuck on a pier support when a big wave came in. Funny picture.