Crab Castle II: TThe Revenge
The dunes were a swamp, and for the first time that I can remember, there were large lakes in the middle and you had to do a lot of searching to make your way through the maze without getting you feet wet. I can’t say I was all that successful, as I managed to soak one of them pretty good trying to get Ike’s new stroller over a narrow body of water, but everyone else came out ok. The older boy was soaked from the waist down after about five minutes playing in the surf anyway, but managed to walk the whole way back to the hotel without hardly complaining.
It wasn’t until we put the boys to bed that night that we realized that we’d forgotten some of Ike’s medicine in the fridge at home. We called Dewy and Ham and asked if they would do us a big favor by meeting one of us in Olympia in the morning and of course they said yes. They are truly the best neighbors one could have inside or outside a trailer park Itellyouwhat. Sunday it rained like hell, and Sweetie and Ike took off for the long drive, about two hours each way, while the older boy and I held down the fort.
Once again the two of us made the trek through the dunes to the beach but it was raining pretty hard and the wind made it too cold to stay for any extended period of time. We stood there for a few minutes not sure of what to do next, looked at each other and then headed back across the dunes. If we were gonna get wet, we thought, we might as well do it in the swimming pool where the water was at least warm and there was a sauna and hot tub rooms.
The older boy and I splashed about for a while. He still doesn’t really swim but likes to jump off the side and have me catch him. Fortunately we were just about the only people in there so splashing and making noise wasn’t really a problem. This year, if he stood on his tiptoes he could just keep his mouth and nose out of the water.
Just an hour or so later while we were eating lunch and hearing about Sweetie and Ike’s adventure, the older boy started to shiver uncontrollably like you do when you’re starting to come down with something if that something were a flu and about an hour after that he was running a fever of just over 102.5. Due to the bizarre way we seem to pack, we not only had a thermometer, but children’s Tylenol also, so not only could we worry about how hot he was, we could actually do something about it as well. Regardless of how prepared we were, the older boy threw up a few times anyway, but did manage to stay awake long enough to watch a movie before finally falling asleep.
Monday was just as picture perfect a day as you can have out on the coast in March. It was t-shirt weather and if the clan had been feeling better, we would have set about building Crab Castle pt III: The Search for the Missing Claw. But as it was, we were still operating at less than full capacity, so we played about in that space between sand and surf, running from the incoming waves as they came in, and chasing them back, sticks in hand, as they went out, running from us like cowards.
In the end well all got milkshakes and watched a deer cross the road right next to where we parked. In truth we would have stayed a week if we could, stayed a week or longer and who knows, maybe we’ll get to do that next time. With short trips like this, it always feels like you’ve finally started settling in, when next thing you know you have to turn it all around and head back the way you came.
When we took that right and headed inland, the great rush of ocean sound faded into something more like laughter; like the ocean had taken up its own stick and in one great taunting wave, called us the cowards before erasing our tracks and washing the beach clean.
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