Fourth of July at the Beach

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Many years ago, I saw an ad for an interesting-looking inn on the Long Beach peninsula. Charlie and I spent a 4th of July weekend there. Washington has very liberal laws regarding fireworks and any adult can buy the kind that explode high up in the air, just like a big fireworks show.

That night, we walked down to the beach and came upon an amazing scene. The peninsula is known for its miles of straight and sandy beaches. There were literally hundreds of fireworks going off up and down the beach, as far as we could see in both ways. It seemed as if we were coming into a battle scene - continual explosions, people everywhere gathered around huge bonfires and so much smoke it was like walking through a thick bank of fog. The fireworks were going off directly above our heads. It was breath-taking and unlike anything we'd ever seen.

Charlie and I started spending quite a few weekends on the peninsula. Several years later, some friends came with us and were quite taken with the area too. They started thinking about a vacation home there and asked us (since they live a long ways away) keep our eyes out for a possible place for them. This, of course, was the perfect excuse we needed to visit even more frequently and it eventually dawned on us that maybe we should look for a house too, given the amount we were spending on motels. So we ended up with our little house.

We've tried to spend as many 4th of July holidays at the beach house as possible. Each of the little towns on the peninsula has a big event and ours has the parade. We sit in the same place each year-- Charlie stakes it out with chairs early in the morning. The parade usually starts with a Coast Guard helicopter swooping over the parade route (all 6 or so blocks of it). Then we have Boy Scouts and senior citizens in classic cars and dogs in costumes and kids riding bikes decorated with flags. The kids watching wave flags and blow horns and run into the street to pick up the candy that gets thrown. It always ends with the Sentry Market Shopping Cart Drill team. The cashiers from the market march with their carts and perform routines to music. It's pretty darned cool.

In evening we join the hundreds of others on the beach who are letting off fireworks. Charlie does some too and always puts on a good show for us.

This year we were excited because our friends Kaz, Marcie and Alia were staying on the Peninsula too. The kids are close in age and had a blast playing together in the little river than runs from near our house into the ocean. This river is rarely the same from visit to visit. It's never very big, but the depth and width changes with the weather and the tides. This year it was the perfect depth for the kids to splash around in, dig channels to and float sticks in. So we played in the river and had a hot dogs and hamburgers in the front yard later. The weather was great the first day and not so warm the second, but the kids played in the river anyway, in between bouts of violent shivering while covered in layers of towels.

On our second trip to China, we bought a large dragon kite in Beijing. Kaz and Charlie got it put together and it flew high in the sky for the longest time.

Kaz took some wonderful pictures and video and shared it with us. Hope you enjoy them too.