Beach Day

Kira and I had what she has dubbed the "best day of the summer" today.  It has been so blazingly hot lately that we decided to see if Lake Superior is swimmable.  Usually it is so cold that you can't even stand to wade up to your ankles, but sometimes, for some reason, it feels relatively warm and it is super fun to swim in it.  Today was a warm-water day.  It was glorious.  It was really windy so there was surf.  I didn't take my camera along but I looked for some comparable pictures online of the kind of surf we were in today.  

It wasn't this big.  This isn't even Lake Superior.  I'm pretty sure it's the ocean.
That's a big wave.  I would never go in that.  

This actually is Duluth, and it is not far from where we were swimming, but the waves weren't this big either.  

This is more like what we were dealing with.  

The bottom picture is the same Park Point beach we were at today, but there were lots of people there, and I want to say that the waves were even a little bigger.  They were big enough to be exhilarating, with a few waves big enough so smack you hard on the back of the head and rip your feet out from under you, but not big enough to be terrifying.  My life-long recurring nightmare is to be swimming and suddenly be faced with a wave like the one in the top picture, but also one of my favorite activities is swimming in surf.  I can see how surfers get addicted to waiting for the next great wave.

When I was a kid and we lived in Australia, we decided to go to the beach one day because it was punishingly hot.  We lived about an hour or so from the coast so we got in the van, complete with barf-bucket/sand castle bucket for me/my sister Beth, and headed to the beach.  We drove around and saw beaches so packed with people there wasn't even room to put your towel down.  We kept driving.  Finally we came across a beautiful beach with white sand and big surf and it was practically empty.  We stopped and spent the day swimming and playing in the sand.  Later we learned that that beach is notorious for it's deadly riptides and sharks.  Oh well.  It wasn't crowded and we survivied.  Win win.

Beach Day

Like I said before, it is blazing hot today so we went to a beach on Lake Superior.  We met my MIL and nieces and the kids and I swam for hours.  The water wasn't as warm as it was on Sunday, but it still felt so good to get in. There was a lady there that had the biggest, tannest boobs I've ever seen in my life.  Cantaloupes the color of walnuts stuffed into a bikini that was WAY too small.  She was about ten years older than me, which means she could be a member of AARP, so you know, too old to be wearing a teeny weeny bikini.  (They make mom-suits for a reason, lady.)  She had a kid there that spotted a cormorant out in the water fishing.  The kid said, "Mom look!  It's a Loch Ness Monster!"  She looked and said, "Oh my god, I can't believe you think that is a sea monster.  Anyone can tell it's a loon."
What a boob!  (get it?)

Anyway, here's some pictures from today. 

The kids all brought goggles so they could search for treasure.

Kira came up sputtering with excitement once and screamed, "I found a jewel!"  

She found an amethyst in the water under a rock.  Pretty good find!

Handsome!

It was so hot that even Sam got in the water!

The boy formerly known as "Dry Boy"

Cousins hopping on rocks

Lake Superior

Water

We spent the weekend in or near water.  It was so great.  Saturday we went on a hike on a trail along the Sucker River and found these great falls that Mitch and Kira swam in. 

Kira thought it was so cool that she could slip right behind the falling water. I didn't bring my swimsuit yesterday or else I would have jumped in too.  I almost went au naturale but my father-in-law was with us and he didn't want to see that.  Sam didn't swim either.  He's more of a desert boy, I think.

Here I am stripping to chants of "Leave it on! Leave it on!" by my son and FIL

I waded and my shoes are still wet. 

Today we went to Brighton Beach along Lake Superior for a picnic and again, I didn't bring my swimsuit because hello, it's Lake Superior.  The mean temperature is about 32.5 degrees.  Brrr.  We got down there and it was HOT and still.  The water was smooth and actually warmish, as in it didn't make me cringe when I touched it. Brighton Beach is rocky and I was having such a good time wading and jumping from rock to rock in the water, that I finally just jumped in with all my clothes on.  As soon as I did Mitch said, "Oh my god, you are such a redneck!" and acted all embarrassed to be seen with me, but five minutes before he judged me like that, he changed into his suit right on the not-packed-but-certainly-peopled beach. (redneck)  We swam for about an hour.  I can't even describe how incredible it was.  I was treading in pleasantly cool water, watching an ore ship head to the harbor, and if I looked down I could see perfectly clearly 15 feet below my feet to the rocks on the bottom.  I love Duluth.