Sand between my toes.

I like the feeling of sand between my toes. I also love the feeling of sun beating down on me and fresh, clean salt water to swim in. So, it was a good camping trip. I think Miracle Beach is the absolute best place to camp. It has the wonderful tall, old trees surrounding the campsites, and the stunning open ocean views at the beach. It has those stumps that huckleberries grow out of. I remember sitting on stumps with a childhood friend on camping trips and eating huckleberries. As I was saying to Daryl this weekend...how exactly did I know they were huckleberries?? I couldn't tell you today what a huckleberry looked like, and wouldnt' trust myself not to eat poisonous berries! But then I guess I wasn't thinking about potential poisonings at that age.

We went for a wonderful walk around an estuary. It was a beautiful combination of forest and beach! We spent one whole day on the beach - myself laying on the beach in the sun tanning (LOVE it!), Daryl spending most of the time in shadier area reading and relaxing.

Two of my favorite pictures: The rock picture. I always end up taking pictures of rocks and sand. I think "that would be perfect to blow up and hang up to decorate." I HAVE done this once with a set of postcards. I color copied 3 beachy post cards and enlarged them (60 cents each!) and framed them. It worked well. I'm collecting pictures for a beach theme wall. I won't of course put this together till we're settled in in Boston, but at least I'll have the pictures. I have some great ones from our camping trip last year too. So, Daryl took this fabulous beach picture below the rocks. It is truely stunning there. Here too. It really is a little bit of paradise here.

There are many more pictures to share, but this is just a sampling. We had a good weekend, and managed to pack a lot in to it. We visited Cherry Point winery on our way down, and bought our wine for the weekend, then had some friends meet us at the campsite for Friday night. We were, ehhem, a *little* bit later than planned (umm...around 9pm) and our wonderful friends had talked their way into our campsite and had a fire going for us when we arrived!! We all had drinks and roasted hot dogs and smores over the fire (and some brie, artichoke dip, and chips and salsa) and had a great time. It's too bad they lock the gates to the campground at 11pm. It was sad to see them go - we don't see them often at all.

We went to Campbell River for some of the Canada day festivities. There was wood carving...and a "parade." There was no "Miss ___ " float, as in osoyoos (see Michelle's post), but there were some shriners driving around like crazy men in formation in these little mini race cars!! It was SO funny! There were all fairly old, but they were MOTORING in these little mini cars. It reminded me of the clowns in the tiny car at the circus. They were going so fast!! Anyhoo, we had the famous ice cream on the pier and headed back to the campsite.

I'm kind of excited - we kind of have a camping "tradition" now. On the last night, we get fresh salmon and cook it with sliced lemon, dill, and salt and pepper in the fire. Then I make up potatoes mixed with olive oil, garlic, rosemary, salt, pepper etc and we roast them in the fire. Both are in foil packages, and we have some type of vegetable (this time it was green beans) with it as well. We did this again this year, and it was SO good! We had a nice Ortega wine from Cherry Point to go with it - it was a treat!

We had a good last day too, amazingly. We were packed up and out of the campground by 11am, and had time to stop at several markets and pick up produce, and make another stop at the winery. We also went for lunch at what we consider to be "our" restaurant. We went to it several times on our honeymoon. It's called the Beach House and is right on the beach route in Qualicam. The patio is literally 50 feet from the waves. Unbelievable food too, and amazyingly reasonably priced. I sat on the patio, sun beaming down on me, wine in hand, waves lapping at the shore only feet away, with my husband next to me. It was a good time. I had a candied salmon pizza with pesto and cream cheese. Super good! We love this restaurant.

So, all in all it was a good weekend. It gave us a chance to step back a bit, have some fun, and have some more in depth talks about the "Big picture" of the move and such. This part really helped me key downa bit about it all. There are still just as many unknowns, and it's still blinking scary, but i have a some more perspective on it now.

Well...off I go - this is what happens when I wait too long between blogs! There is more to post just from the last few days! It will have to wait till another time though.