As our long-awaited annual beach vacation comes to a close, I’m feeling homesick. Not to be ungrateful, but I’m looking forward to being in my own home. I miss my cat. My friends, who moved from our old neighborhood in Palm Springs to a mile away in Arizona, have texted and asked when we’ll be back with “We miss you!”
All year long, I’ve looked forward to our weeks out of the heat, at the beach. I guess I didn’t feel “vacationy” with all the anxiety of health issues with our family. I spent the first two weeks in a state of constant worry.
Once relief hit us — that our future DIL will be okay — and COVID also had come and gone with our children, we finally relaxed.
But, then four days in a row, once our fear was gone, we accepted invitations with friends. We hadn’t felt like socializing until things settled down. Four days in a row was way too much for introverted me. We said no to friends yesterday and today. We spent evenings until sunset enjoying a beach walk, sitting until the sun set, and being quiet. Just what my soul needed.
If there’s no place like home, I wish I could click my heels three times and be home — without the nine-hour drive!
When you are on vacation, do you look forward to returning home — or do you want vacation to last longer?
I love how each walk at the beach can have such different views.
I’m not sure if this is a hawk or not, but it’s gorgeous. I stopped to watch it glide on the breeze.
Ashton Kutcher’s house with a small cottage in front.
Afternoon beach walk.
Keven Costner’s property has the white deck and house on the point, valued at $145 million.
The same bird from the other photo. There’s an interesting complex of homes at the opposite end of the beach.
I loved watching this Vizsla dog and puppy chase a frisbee. I missed the shots where the dog leaped into the air to catch the frisbee with the puppy trailing.
I looked up the prices of homes on this beach. The ones I found start at $20 million up to $100 million.
“Time may change me “But I can’t trace time” — David Bowie
Our first morning walk at the beach. There was something very different about it. See that rig in the ocean? Next we saw this sign:
There are oil rigs off the coast of Santa Barbara that are active — but you can barely see them in the distance. I believe they are at least five miles offshore.
On the beach below the house we rent, there are signs like the one above that weren’t around last summer. There are also signs explaining the work that’s going on. They are recapping 100-year-old oil wells a few dozen yards offshore. That’s what the barge with the equipment is for (see top photo.) They are capped but leak when storms hit. We watched two tug boats stop at the barge. Then we noticed tar clumps all over the sand.
The beaches here always have spots of oil and tar, but this year it’s much worse. We keep paper towels and “Goo Gone” next to the hose at the backdoor to clean our feet after our beach excursions.
The other change was our favorite spot for breakfast burritos in Carpinteria — which was inside a liquor store — is gone. We drove for burritos and were stunned. Someone bought the entire block on Linden Ave and demolished the buildings. I wonder what will be built?
On our morning walk on the tar blotched beach, I was relieved to see the driftwood sculpture condos were still in tact. I wrote about them on an earlier beach trip HERE.
There were a few additions this year that I enjoyed:
Words of wisdom: Be More Like My Dog!
Prince Harry lives to the left. That’s a fact. Montecito is to the left of this beach.
Kevin Costner’s $145 million home where his divorced wife refused to leave is to the right around the point.
Lots of changes going on around us. We can’t stop change. Another change: our son and his long-term girlfriend were getting married Thursday. We were flying from Santa Barbara to Oakland for the nuptials. Our son called today and has COVID. No wedding. Change of plans.
It was Waffles the Pug’s seventh birthday over the weekend. Since I’m in a low mood due to health issues in my family and I can’t focus, I decided photos of Waffles were in order to make me smile — and you, too. Who doesn’t like cute puppy pictures?
Seven years ago we got Waffles as a Christmas present for our daughter. Waffles became an unofficial mascot for her Utah swim team and they allowed him to come to swim practice. The sports marketing team posed him for social media posts. He’s been a joy to everyone, especially my daughter.
Waffles is a love bug, but does have one annoying habit. He puts whatever he can into his mouth. He’s uncontrollable like a two-year-old. Consequently, he’s given us plenty of scares. Once he found an adderall on the floor at a friend of my daughter’s. That was a night in the ER. Then he ate poisonous berries in our backyard. Trip to ER. The worst though was when he swallowed a piece of wood that got lodged in his small intestine. Surgery. Good thing my daughter has dog insurance!
Through all the fun and the drama, I can’t figure out where seven years disappeared.
Waffles in the sweater I bought him for cold Utah winters.
Waffles in one of his Ute posts.
Waffles in Carpinteria celebrating his first birthday at the beach.
Waffles in his puppy glory.
Waffles with his momma when we met him.
Waffles hanging out with our daughter in our backyard.
My daughter and Waffles. Graduation from college.
What do you think is more adorable — puppies or kittens and why?
I read that naming pets after food is a trend in 2023. I guess my daughter was ahead of her time?
“All right mates! Let’s go.” Rob, an Aussie, called out to us when we parked in front of an apartment complex in Santa Barbara.
We jumped into his car without unloading ours. Off we went to the harbor where he said his wife Debbie was waiting for us on their sailboat.
That’s the first time I met the couple who would become our close friends. It was “BK” before kids — and around 35 years ago. My husband and Rob met on the East Coast training with a large brokerage firm. They had hit it off and decided we all needed to get together once they returned to California.
On the boat, Rob shouted orders like “Skirt the jib!” “Ready about!” or “Trim the main.”
My husband and I were expected to jump in and help, but we didn’t now what to do. Debbie showed us “the ropes” and how to respond to each command.
Years before, I had taken sailing at the University of Washington in college with my brother. We were in a small sailboat and I remember getting hit in the head by the boom. My earrings popped out and a clump of hair ripped out of my head onto the boom as we “came about.” I had a small amount of experience — which was more than my husband had.
We soon learned that this was not a leisurely sail. We found ourself in a Santa Barbara Yacht Club race!
That weekend was the beginning of years of friendship. In the early years, we visited them and stayed in their apartment because they were too busy to visit us. Rob left the brokerage business and they opened a savory Aussie pie shop that sold hand-held pies about the size of hamburgers.
My favorite pies were scallop and cheese, spinach and feta — and best of all — Shepherd’s pie. The pie shop was the first of several entrepreneurial businesses.
I remember one afternoon driving to a beach for a picnic. We got stuck in traffic that wasn’t moving. They pulled off the road and set up a picnic on a red and white checkered tablecloth with smoked oysters, tomatoes, cheese, crackers, and a bottle of “cab sav” in a field dotted with cows in the far off distance.
Time spent with Rob and Debbie is always an adventure. I can’t wait to see them in August on our vacation.
My husband and me on our friends’ sailboat decades after meeting them.
Rob at the tiller with Debbie.
Fred and Honey, our friends’ Galahs. Rob had to give up his Australian citizenship to bring them to the U.S.
How did you meet your close friends from decades ago? Do you stay in touch today?
Saturday we started out with a huge walk on the beach. The plan for the rest of the day was to hang out on the beach, swim, float, read and relax. Then we’d go out for a dinner at the $15 prime rib place. We’d be leaving early Sunday morning to get our daughter-in-law Buff to the airport in Phoenix so she could fly back to Northern California.
Once we were in our bathing suits and packed our books, towels and waters, I came up with the idea to rent a pop-up tent from vendors on the beach. Shade would be a welcome addition to our day and would allow my husband to join us. His pale Irish skin is adverse to sun.
The first couple hours were heaven. We were out in the ocean together floating, bouncing over the small waves and feeling fabulous.
Eventually, my husband said he had enough sun and headed back to the condo. I sat on a towel reading in the shade, while Buff stayed in the ocean. Like my daughter said, “It’s impossible to get her out of the ocean.”
After another hour, she came running to the shade of the pop-up tent.
“I got bit by a crab!” she said plopping down on a towel, holding her foot in a panic.
I looked at her foot and their were welts below her little toe wrapping around the side of her foot.
“I think it’s a stingray,” I said.
We had experienced stingrays in Laguna Beach years ago when my husband got stung.
“I’ll go up to the condo and get hot water,” I said. “Stay here, I’ll be right back.
“Bring Advil!” she said.
I ran up to the condo and yelled to my husband, “Buff got stung by a stingray.”
We heated up three to-go cups of water in the microwave and made our way back to Buff.
She was writhing on the ground in pain, surrounded by people. Paramedics had arrived by beach motorcycle and I handed them the cups of hot water.
They motioned for me to stand back and one held her foot while the other gave her two shots in the foot. They applied a cream and then took my hot water, soaked gauze in it and wrapped her foot.
My husband asked what was the shot. The paramedics didn’t speak English, so the guy renting pop-up tents translated. It was lidocaine.
We helped Buff up to the condo and put her feet in the tub. My husband heated more hot water as hot water poured out of the faucet. She was somewhat okay until the lidocaine wore off, which was a mere 15 or 20 minutes.
I ran back to the pop-up tent and gathered our things.
The next two hours were spent heating water and helping Buff through excruciating pain. I felt like a mid-wife with my daughter-in-law giving birth. It was that bad.
Hot water kills the toxins but it has to be at least 110 degrees, so that in itself is painful. My son was on facetime telling me to get a thermometer so Buff wouldn’t scald her feet. I tried to explain that we were in Mexico and I couldn’t run anywhere closeby for a thermometer.
I went through this same stingray ordeal with my husband years before. The lifeguard told me to get hot water and explained that it would ease the pain as it killed the venom. I rushed up to a nearby coffee shop and got cups of hot water. The lifeguard said most people go to the ER, because they can’t tolerate the pain. My husband refused to go to the ER and I drove him back to our hotel with him hyperventilating in the car and me afraid he was going into a seizure. Our kids were scared to death.
I kept asking Buff if she wanted to go to a hospital, but none of us were that keen on going to a hospital in Mexico.
My husband, having gone through it, recalled the pain would ease up in about 90 minutes to two hours. He said after that, if she was still in pain, we’d take her to an ER. We were also frantically on google which substantiated our decisions.
Like clockwork, the pain eased according to schedule. We were all exhausted.
“Now you know how to get me out of the ocean!” she said.
It was paradise, until it wasn’t!
Have you ever been stung by sea creatures? If so, what type of creature? What are your thoughts of swimming in the ocean versus lakes?
Here are two bits of music we enjoyed. The first was next to the El Camaronero statue downtown, the other at the pool bar at the condo. I suggested we sit there for a few minutes hours after Buff’s pain subsided to end our trip on a better note!
It was a gorgeous, fun weekend. So, before anyone freaks out why it wasn’t… we’re home safely, but ran into a couple of snafus — so it wasn’t a perfect paradise after all. I’m saving that for tomorrow in PART TWO. Today, I’m showing you photos of paradise.
The weather was perfect. I spent more time in the Sea of Cortez this trip, swimming, floating on my back and loving every moment thanks to Buff (our DIL.) I was talking to my daughter on the phone who spends time with Buff in the Bay Area. They are beach buddies who swim, body surf and boogie board. Buff took up surfing during the last year or two. (If you’re wondering where our son was on this trip, he wasn’t there due to a passport delay.)
“You’re not going to get Buff out of the ocean,” my daughter told me.
Well, we figured out how to get her out of the water….more tomorrow.
More photos:
Me laughing during our walk to the reef when Buff did a photo shoot of me.
Hubby sitting down during our photo shoot. Downtown is the point in the background.
Buff downtown Puerto Penasco.
One of the statues at the Old Port:
There is large statue of a fisherman and a shrimp that was dedicated in 2003 and is known as “El Camaronero.”
View from one of the many pools at the resort steps from the ocean.
My husband and Buff out for a swim in the Sea of Cortez.
What excitement have you had on a vacation that you didn’t expect? What’s your idea of paradise on vacation?
