the big trip, day 6, pt 1

On Monday, we took off for a little road trip on our own. We took an hour drive from Concord to near Ipswich, MA to visit Crane Beach. Crane Beach is a wildlife refuge area that was donated to the state of Massachusetts by the Crane family, who earned their fortune from toilets. It is arguably one of the most beautiful beaches I've seen. We arrived about 10 a.m. and had almost the entire beach to ourselves. The weather had been a bit tricky; it was very overcast most of the time that we were there, but the temperature was pretty perfect with a cool breeze that felt great. We believe another reason for the small crowds was fear of the green head fly, which apparently packs a pretty tough bite. We had been sufficiently warned, so we applied potent insect repellant as soon as we exited the car in the parking lot. However, despite a large written and verbal warning as we entered the park, we hardly saw a fly. (Again, our luck was just teriffic on this trip...we should have purchased a lottery ticket while we were on a roll.) The water temperature that day was a chilly 63 degrees. So, we weren't in the water much--it was a bit chilly. As soon as we got down to the beach, we found some of the most amazing clam shells and an actual mermaid's purse (which is an egg sack for a ray of some sort, in case you don't know). Will was so excited to see one in person!

Our friend Madeleine had encouraged us to walk down the beach to find some large rocks to climb on. We walked for most of an hour (there and back) just exploring and enjoying the big rocks on the beach. We would stand on some near the water and watch as the tide would sweep up around our feet. We found beautiful pieces of driftwood, gorgeous bleached-out clam shells, and some very neat mussel shells. All of these flew home with us to Texas and are fun reminders of our time at this great beach. Ben and Will played and played in the sand together. At one point, Ben came up and asked me to bury him in the sand. He just absolutely cracked up the entire time. Ben likes to point to the picture above and say, "get it mommy? I cracked up? like the sand cracked up?" He's very punny.