Beach Erosion

For much of the summer, Erin and I have gone down to Salt Creek Beach on Tuesdays and Fridays to meet our friends and have some fun. Today marked what will most likely be our last regular visit of the summer, as next week we'll be away and the week after that, school starts. So we packed up the car this morning and headed down. The first thing we noticed, as we went up over the hill right near our house, was that the ocean area was shrouded in fog. Bummer. But who cares? Even an overcast day at the beach is better than a day at home. When we got there, we schlepped down to the beach (it's a long, downhill walk), to find that the beach was, well, small. It's usually a good distance between the water and the sitting areas (even in high tide), but today, that wasn't the case. The high surf that we've been experiencing this week has definitely taken its toll on the beaches. There was a short beach to sit on, and then a 3-4 foot drop (literally!) down to where the water was. And seeing as it was high tide, we had a few times when the waves splashed against that wall o' sand and up and over it. Interesting... It was odd to look down the beach and see that wall stretch as far as the eye could see. This picture isn't the greatest, but you can definitely get the idea.

Of course, the girls certainly didn't mind the inconvenience of having to climb up a cliff face to get back to their towels. They spent much of the time building "steps" in it to make it easier, and doing other things that we couldn't quite see from our perch up above. But in this pic, you can see how much lower they were down there than we were up top! They were STANDING UP! Yikes!