Thursday – beach morning

We’d planned no excursions for Thursday.  Really just wanted a day we could go to the beach and try our hand at boogey boarding.  I took the camera out for my run in the morning.  Got this shot on the road high above our villa looking down over Ocean World and the marina.

I continued on up over the hill and back down toward highway 5.

When I arrived at the beach, I was happy to see the ocean was as angry as we’d ever seen it.  It would make for good boogie boarding. 

But still within the limits of the yellow flag that advised patrons at the Lifestyles suite.  The red flag was evidently reserved for the worst of seas.  I got back to the villa with Maeve and Jane there to greet me at the front door.

I showered and we sat down to a Nellie breakfast of Eggs, Fruit and pancakes.

After breakfast we lathered up and headed down to the beach with the exception of Kate and Maeve who stayed at the villa.  The villa has a lifestyles key chain card and is stocked with blue lifestyles towels, so it was easy for us to fit in at the lifestyles pool and setup camp there.  We dropped the majority of our baggage at the pool and headed down to the beach with our boogey boards.  Theo and Bryce started by jumping waves, while Zeke, Janie and I attempted to ride some waves with the boards.  It took about 15 minutes before we realized we needed to catch the waves much closer to shore and take the short ride into the sandy beach.  Not as much fun as Kauai, but still fun.  Bryce won the prize for collecting the most sand in his shorts.  Later taking out a handful and after Janie said ‘gross’, he went into a 5 minute dialogue on the sand in his shorts just to bug Janie.  Bryce is a bit funny that way.  I sat for awhile talking to a woman who’d was just finishing a 3 week stay.  She said the only excursion she’d taken was a zip-line, which she’d enjoyed.  I couldn’t imagine just hanging out at the beach and Lifestyle complex for 3 weeks.  Would’ve driven me crazy from boredom.  But then again, I like to be fairly active on vacation.  We were in the ocean for a good 2 hours before a young duo of girls looking official in orange pullover vests approaches us and told us that we could not boogey board on Easter weekend.  The beaches were too busy.  I tried to beg for clarification since the beaches were nearly empty on Thursday morning, but evidently this rule was set in stone and we needed to stop.  No matter, between Bryce’s sandy shorts and Zeke’s abrasive swim shirt, we were ready to head back anyway.  I reapplied sunscreen in the hopes that we’d stay at the LIfestyle pool for awhile and play some volleyball over the net, but everyone but Jane and I decided it was time to head back.  So Jane and I went as well.  We ate lunch and spent the rest of the day just hanging out at the villa’s pool, in preparation for the big dolphin swim day on Friday.