The Beach in February

Well, the girls are home from school this week for "ski week".  This of course means Mom is off work too.  Today I asked the girls what they wanted to do, and we decided on the ocean. We have had rain most of the week, but there was a little break in the rain today.  We drove out to my favorite clam chowder restaurant and got some chowder to go, and then headed out for "School House beach"  We ate at a table that was right on a cliff overlooking the ocean.  It was windy, but actually we had some blue skies.  The ocean was pretty fierce however, and made me a little nervous with the girls.  Not to mention the fact that NO ONE was at the ocean today.  At this point memories of people being killed on the beach here in Nor Cal come rushing through my head, so we went looking for a beach with a few normal looking people on it.  We did finally find a couple of beaches that we took walks on.  We attempted to go tide pooling, but with the tide coming in quickly we were out of luck.  We pretended we had to hurry and get out of the rocks and back to the car or we would be killed against the rocks and no one would ever know what happened to us.  A bit dramatic maybe, but hey... we were on an adventure.  It really was a great day together.  We drove all over Bodega with our windows down, smelling the ocean breeze, and feeling the cold ocean air. (We did however have the heat on full blast :o)  We checked out some camping spots, however the girls informed me "this is not the wilderness" and decided Wrights Lake is definitely more of what we want.  On the way home, we talked about what a beautiful place we live in, here in Northern California.  We have the ocean, mountains, rivers, the city, redwoods, rolling hills and beautiful wine vineyards all around us.  We decided we are truly blessed to live where we do.  We can go on many different adventures, whenever we want!