When September Ends

That's the first picture I took of our trip to the beach on Monday, when Kiernan's school was closed for Yom Kippur and Wendy was on a work trip to Texas. We got to the sand, spread out the blanket, slathered on the sunblock, and Kiernan got down to business burying his dinosaurs in the sand.

Velociraptor says "Hi".


I don't speak Dino, so I can't be certain, but I believe I can interpret Saltosaurus' expression below as, "Oh the humanity."


We pretty much had the beach to ourselves.


A beautiful, moderate day, so welcome after all the oppressive heat of the Valley these last weeks. It was even a little overcast, which was a nice change. There were some surfers down at the surfer area, all sitting on their boards, bobbing up and down in the water. And a couple of guys stacking rocks down in the rocky section of the beach. Seriously. A long stretch of this beach is all rock, and these two dudes were stacking the rocks and balancing them and making cairns out of them. I wish I'd taken a picture of that, but I was in pack-animal mode when I saw them so I really couldn't. Here's a picture that shows some of the rocky area:


Those dots in the water over Kiernan's shoulder are the aforementioned surfers. The building there in the distance is the restroom/shower/lifeguard station. The parking lot is directly behind that, up an embankment. We walk down the beach past the rocky area and stake out an area with plenty of sand. We will bury dinosaurs with this sand. We will dig a trench and position the dinosaurs in the trench and then pour buckets of water down the trench to see how the dinosaurs get "slooshed" downstream. We will dig an enormous hole and jump into and out of it (more on the hole in a bit).

We will also constantly chase away seagulls. Because we have a history with them. One almost absconded with one of his toys last year. This was a fairly traumatic moment, but don't worry. It has made us stronger.


Here we see Kiernan about to go after a seagull he believes is getting a little too close to his dinosaurs. To me he kind of looks like a raptor as he makes his approach.


Here he confronts the seagull head on. What you can't hear, since this picture oddly has no audio, is the impressive Microraptor call Kiernan gives as he does this. It's really something. Next time you see him, ask him to do that for you. Make sure you're in a quiet restaurant and/or have a headache when you do this.

Next...The Black Hole.