Charleston, Part 2

When I go to the beach, I want my room to have an oceanfront balcony. My reasons being that 1. I get sunburned by just walking out and looking at the sun, and 2. the older I get, the more often I like to just sit and watch when I'm on vacation.

Jeff and I got checked into our room, and after dropping our bags, the first thing we did was walk out onto the balcony to check out our view.

We weren't disappointed.

Our room had a kitchenette, so we got food at the grocery store for breakfast and lunch. And that meant that every day at breakfast and lunch, you'd find us on our balcony sitting at the table. Cheerios always taste better when you can hear the ocean waves!

It was warm enough to see lots of activity. There were sunbathers, little kids splashing in the water and building castles in the sand, kiteboarders, paddleboarders, kite flyers and more.

Except for my fear of water, this looks like a lot of fun. They
could go any way they wanted to go just by moving the kite.

This guy would take sharp turns and make big waves.

This man was flying two sets of kites. All the kites on the left were hooked
together in a vertical row, and all the ones on the right were hooked together.
But this one guy could make each group swoop and swirl all around.

There was also plenty of birdwatching.

Jeff loves his binoculars at the beach. He forgot to take his big ones, but he finally bought a small pair to leave in the car, and that's what he used at the beach.

He didn't really need the binoculars, though, because the birds hung out (even hovered) right near our balcony. Check out this gull. It was hard to take video of him, but you can see how he just hovered there, right near us.

Jeff checked out plenty of pelicans, too.

We got a treat one morning. We watched a paddleboarder row by, and then he suddenly stopped and started looking out into the ocean. It took us a minute to figure it out, but there was a whole pod of dolphins playing just off shore. The water couldn't have been more than 6 feet deep where they were playing. We had seen people wading almost that far out.

The ocean floor is really shallow for a pretty good distance where we were, so we were surprised at how close in the dolphins were swimming and playing.

We watched them for probably an hour before they moved on.

I wish I had an email address for this paddleboarder. I bet he would like to have a copy of this photo. He and the dolphin just looked at each other for several seconds.

From 6:30 to 8:30 a.m., dogs can run on the beach without leashes. So one morning, I had a great dilemma. There were dogs playing on one end of the beach, the beautiful ocean in the middle and some firefighters playing touch football on the other end of the beach. Where should I focus my attention? Decisions, decisions!

This black lab fetched about a million tennis balls from the surf.

I guess if you have to have a morning workout,
flag football on the beach would be quite nice.

Jeff and I worked from 5 p.m. to midnight for many years, and we always hated when housekeeping came by at hotels. Our sleeping hours were usually from 4 a.m. to noon, and the housekeeping staff would show up about 10 or 10:30 a.m. Imagine if someone woke you up two hours before you were supposed to get up. And trying to get checked out by 11 a.m. on the last day was always a huge chore.

Nowadays, with both of us working the day shift, we can make the 11 a.m. checkout time with no problem. And even with what we now call "sleeping late," we were awake every morning before housekeeping came by knocking.

I wasn't awake for sunrise a single day on our trip, but I did get this picture not too long after the sun came up.

The time we spent at the ocean was relaxing and fun, and I didn't get sunburned. I can't wait 'til we can go back again.