Day 1.099: Some err in April?

"Let's go to the beach tomorrow." said Exile #2 yesterday. So we did and ended up recreating a classic mid-summer English seaside trip in New York in the middle of Spring. OK not quite, but we did quite well: sandcastles - check, fish and chips - check, exhausted but happy kids - check. We skipped on actually going to the sea, a town (in fact any sort of facilities - open anything before Memorial Day? Don't be ridiculous!), parking problems, crowds, running away from waves, missing the tide.

We had an early lunch on the way and at about 1 pm arrived at our favourite year-round beach destination. It was not exactly crowded.


Soon the kids were playing in the heat of the warmest day of the year so far.

After a while E5N1 started to get tired so we persuaded them to come on a walk in the forest around the lake.

The girls did amazingly well on an uneven and a times waterlogged trail.


We did about two miles there-and-back to the far end of the lake. It would have been two and a half to go around, but we decided that we'd go with the known rather than risk continuing with the girls anxious to get back to the beach.

Once again, we managed to find a bit of beach-space when we returned.


The park closes at dusk and as the sun was dipping below the trees, we returned to the car - it was not until we set off to find something to eat that Exile #2 noticed that it was 6.30 pm. As we ate our fish and chips we watched a temperature reading on a display outside a bank fall, in about 10 minutes, from 80 °F to 75 °F. It's been pretty close to a perfect day.