Vacation is coming to an end however we are relishing every moment we have left! Today we were very excited to wake up to no rain clouds in the sky and nothing but sunshine. I went running this morning and then while Jay was reading, I took the kids to the beach. I was soooo excited about having one day at the beach ALL day! Well we didn't spend the whole day at the beach....it's kind of a funny story actually. Well,it wasn't so funny then, actually terrifying, but as I look back, I wish I would have had a video of it!
Supposedly there is a storm brewing out in the gulf headed towards Texas and it has the ocean turned upside down. The waves are HUGE, California kind of waves, and the rip current is really strong. It has been a red flag for several days now and lifeguards are on their tiptoes. The beach was packed today due to the past two days it has been raining. It seems everyone else wanted to spend the day at the beach as well!
We enjoyed the first little while at the beach throwing frisbee, building sand castles and just relaxing until I see a lifeguard walking through our beach whistling telling people to get out of the water. He was walking around telling people the current was getting worse as the day went on and to keep children out of the water. His words to me were, "It's a rough day out there and it's getting worse. I am afraid I am going to earn my money today!"
The tide was WAY up, really close to the dunes actually and people were camped out far back on the sand, including us. However I had taken my chair down by the water and Lucy and I were just hanging out watching Karis and Brayden play. Then IT happened. The only way I know how to describe it was like a tsunami video where you see cars, people, things floating as the water swept them up. A huge wave came so far on the sand that it came up to my waist, threw me and Lucy back in our chair and as I got up quickly to run to our stuff, I see people screaming and running to the sand and people's belongings, chairs, stuff all floating in the water and rushing with the wave towards the sand. I could see my camera bag sitting on the ground on the sand and all I could do was to run and pick it up before it got swept away. It was like everything happened in slow motion. "Nnnnnnoooooooo!" Everyone's belongings, shoes, sand toys, etc were scattered all over the beach! The kids and I were all very scared, my heart was pounding and it was all I could do to pack our things up as quickly as possible and LEAVE the beach! So much for our whole day at the beach ha! It was one of the scariest moments of my life! Oh and my camera was saved because it was in a waterproof bag but the lady next to me lost her video camera when it was swept away by the tsunami like wave....and all of her beach footage too. :(
I tried to capture the waves but pictures just don't do it justice. They were HUGE!
Looking at some of these pictures you can see how far the tide was coming in...
Some of the waves came very close to reaching the dunes...
Karis found a crab and was soooo excited! I was too because we had looked for one the night before and never found one.
This is post-tsunami wave. You can see where the water had come up passed everyone's chairs, belongings etc. Prior to this wave, everyone was on dry sand.
You can see down the beach there were people all the way back to the dunes under their umbrellas...it was nuts! I have never seen it this bad at the beach!
Needless to say, we came back to the pool for the afternoon and went swimming. Lucy said to Jay prior to this picture, "Daddy, I play baseball. Come on!"
Taken from our porch... the pool is in our backyard. It was NICE!
We took some family pictures tonight at the beach (funny story about that too...post coming soon) and then took the kids to get ice cream at Marble Slab which was YUM-MY!
Then we went over to Bass Pro Shop to look around.
A great ending to a very eventful day. I will proceed with caution to the beach tomorrow haha!
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