South Shore Beach Day

The best part of getting to the our South Shore destination is that we get a vacation from our vacation. That sounds a bit weird but after driving for what seemed like all day, everyday so far it was nice to sit still. 

We spent the night with Ryan's family (and this sweet darling kitten!) but they had work and school the next day so we went out on our own. 

Our first stop of the day was North East Point Beach. We were the only ones on the sand but there were plenty of people in the parking lot. 

The beach seemed different from last time when we were there. A new boardwalk showed up and most of these rocks and the bottom of the posts weren't visible last year.

Once we walked past what's left of the old wharf and through the rocky area we got to the soft pale sand. I think walking on marshmallows would feel similar. The sand felt like it was saturated with water, but not wet, a strange sensation.

We spent a while walking on the beach, dipping our toes in and out of the water and occasionally spotting tiny crabs. We had one more stop we wanted to get to before swimming and didn't want to miss the warmest part of the day.

Our next stop was Baccaro Point to see the lighthouse. Just thinking about it now, I don't think I've seen more than 1 or 2 lit lighthouses in all the times I've been to the maritimes.

We walked out on the rocks for a while and looked for sea glass. Last year we found a few colourful pieces, this year we only got 1 little piece before giving up.

A pair of ladies pulled up around the same time as us with big cameras and a picnic basket. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, capturing what surrounded them. One of them offered to take pictures for us and we chatted for a bit about this and that, mostly the weather and the waves.

Our final beach stop for the afternoon was Sandhills. We had a picnic lunch behind a big Boulder when we arrived. It was quite windy and the rocks protected us nicely while we ate our pizza.

When we finished eating, climbing on the rocks and pretending to do yoga for photos we got rid of the trash and walked across the rippled sand to where we wanted to swim.

The tide was really far out and made for quite the trek getting from our towels to the water. And as pretty as the sand looked, it was painful to walk on and even more painful to run across.

Considering it was September and in Alberta it was already down to highs of +8 and below, this water was unbelievably warm. Outside the wind, it was a really hot summery day here. 

The low tide I mentioned also makes for really shallow water. We walked and walked and never get deeper than my waist. Part of the fun of swimming in really shallow water is walking around on your hands and letting the waves push you around. We spent a while seeing who could get back to the shore fastest using only the faves and not propelling ourselves at all. I won. For some reason Ryan barely moved at all.

2 hours later when we had enough swimming and dried off, we snacked on our sun warmed watermelon and walked back along the beach and up to the parking lot. Once we dropped off our stuff at the car we walked out again for a quick peek at the neighbouring beach, Sebim. We only stayed for a minute to look around and wiggle our toes in the white sand before going back home to the see the family again.