A Castle on the Beach

We've been having crazy weather lately.  Hot, cold, heatwave, rain!  A few weeks ago it was such a beautiful day that I asked my 4-year-old if he wanted to go to the beach.  At first he said no, and that he wanted to go to the park.  But then I told him that the beach I was thinking of had a castle!  This look of amazement came over his face and he excitedly asked if he could wear his knight costume and slay the dragon! 

Years ago, I'm talking like over 20 years ago, I discover this little known (to me anyway) beach in Laguna Beach, that has an actual castle turret, which looks like it came off of a 16th century castle.  There are rusted mesh metal windows and a (locked) door, with stone steps leading up to it, and when you peek inside you can see a wooden staircase winding it's way up to the top of the cliff.  It seems that this is a walkway from the house on the cliff, down to the beach.  Whatever it is, it's absolutely gorgeous! 

Time to go slay the dragon!  Or maybe just check out the tide pools.  One of my favorite things to do in the whole world!

On our way down to the beach, between two beautiful beach homes

Heaven forbid we use the actual stairs.

We're here!

Finding mussels in the sand

A little nervous at first...  ...but he was ok with them once he realized they wouldn't bite him.

The water was so cold!

Testing out Mother Nature.

This little guy was just enjoying the beach.

We found a sea urchin and a crab shell hanging out in a mussel shell!

I was so fascinated with this thing, with it's encrusted wiggling legs, while he was totally over it.

My brave little boy -

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean...

He was terrified of this "working" crab claw, but held it anyway. Then he threw it into the ocean, and wanted it back almost as soon as it made a splash.

But it was too late.  It was gone. He was SO SAD. I'm glad we got a picture!

Searching for treasure.

A treasure pocket

hermit crab - again terrified, but he warmed up to it.

He even held it for a bit, but was happy to put it back

Touching the sea anemones.

Took me a while to get him to touch these sea anemones, too! And he wouldn't come anywhere NEAR the big ones!

Corral. I had to call them "little volcanoes" to get him to touch them.

We started making our way back to the sand...

...to catch sandcrabs, put on our floaties and play in the water, when...

...he found a new friend on the beach, who had monster trucks!  Good times ensued.

This kid's dad had built him a sand castle, and a monster truck track!  He even took a shovel and made this huge track for this kid's large trucks.  I really need to find a fold up camping shovel so that I can build a track like this for him when we go to the beach next.  Brilliant!!

He went up to this kid's dad and asked him what his name was, when the man told him it was "Shel", he turned excitedly and ran screaming to me, "MOMMY!!  His name is "SHELL!!!!!!"  Like a SEA-SHELL!!!!"  I'm glad Shel thought it was pretty funny, too.  

Laguna Beach is so beautiful.  I forget that we live so close and can enjoy a mini-vacation on a whim.  It was a good day.