Got up at a decent hour this morning and headed down to JDub's folks' where we'd temporarily kept the red boat stored. We enjoyed a nummy breakfast with them (potato pancakes!), then JDub hooked the boat up to the Durango and we headed to H*ars*tine to store it there. I hadn't been there since October! It felt good to be back! For a January day, it wasn't too bad -- around 50 deg. Dry at least (we did hit a misty drizzle on the way, but it never affected us while we were there).
JDub got the boat all situated -- here he was (ahem) checking the battery (which is dead) and I just HAD to get this shot! (heh heh). The boat now has a blue cover over it, that was kind of a pain because it's a little too big and JDub was trying to prevent rain from eventually pooling so he had to stick some firewood and stuff inside to try to "tent" it.
Then we headed down to the beach! Woohoo! The tide was out so we had a lot of beach to roam around and search for agates. The lighting was bad for agate-hunting though (no sun!), but I did manage to find 2-1/2. (One is quite small so I'll call it half an agate). I believe I simply got lucky. It's interesting how the beach changes over the months. We have a lot of driftwood near the bank and it was totally rearranged, requiring us to maneuver over and around it. It's not "pretty" driftwood. In fact? It's all butt-ugly, which is why I've never taken any pictures of that area! Our plan is to have a HUGE beach fire at some point and burn it all, which will probably be quite a challenge, timing it with tides, and hoping it dries out enough to actually burn. It'll be one helluva smokey fire, I'll bet. We'll also have to time it before the summer burn-ban season.
We've been in touch with an architect, and we're all set to get some things rolling -- not so much with having a house designed quite yet, but to have them act as our advocate so we can (hopefully) get a variance to build a little closer to the water than what the laws allow and lock that in somehow. Then -- we can start planning and working toward that. Maybe even build the garage (where we would want it to be in relation to where the house will go), and use part of that as sort of a "cabin" for a while. It'll be a long process, I'm sure! We're expecting to probably tent it again this summer. That's actually pretty fun, but it DOES require decent and dry weather! Can't count on that around here.
On our way home, we stopped at our favorite bar & grill and had steamer clams! Yum! And their prices increased! Damn! Good day, though. Felt good to get some fresh air.
