A Fun Friday Afternoon

After I got my work done, and did my weekly grocery shopping, I headed down to Salt Creek Beach, scored a Rock Star parking space in the 3:30pm jammed packed parking lot, and hauled my contractor grade shovels and sand forms down to 'just above the high tide mark'.

I experimented with dry sand, moist sand, really sopping-wet sand...  and found that moderately wet was the best for forming parapets and towers.  Sopping wet stayed inside the forms, or became amorphous once the form was lifted.

Altogether, it took roughly 90 minutes of digging and forming, to make a T-shaped sand castle with moats, that was roughly 8ft by 6ft  by 2 feet high, with a 18 inch deep moat.  The moat's intention was to divert the rising tide, but high tide was at 6:19, and when I left at 6:30, the waves advanced to within 3 feet of the first moat, and did not fill it.

Sadly, a small child, who was a very cocky, oldest son of a polygamous Arabic family ("my mother's friends like your sand castle, and want me to take a picture of it" the 8 year old boy told me, and pointed at the 3 hijab wearing women, standing next to a fourth woman wearing all black and sun glasses & head scarf on the beach.  When his tank-top and shorts wearing father came over, I said to him "As-Salaam-Alaikum," to which he immediately responded "Wa-Alaikum-Salaam") kept threatening the construction of the castle, and repeatedly mocking it, telling me how he could do better using just his hands) triumphantly ran over, danced across and kicked down the construction by the time I had walked to the elevated exit road, heading back to my car.  He was unable to contain his destructive envy any longer.  But that's ok.  It was a fun experiment to build, and practice.

Our friends Tory & Alan will come to Orange County to visit us this weekend, and they're bringing their two elementary school aged sons with them, who (I think) will enjoy building an even better castle this weekend - if we can find a parking spot at the Salt Creek Beach lot, that is!