Past the Mid Point

It's Wednesday night and we are now past the mid point for our vacation. The weather has been fantastic so far.  Today the biting flies were out, but besides that there's nothing to complain about.  There was a emergency on the beach about a mile south of us.  The emergency vehicles included a Coast Guard helicopter hovering over the area for about an hour.  I believe the search was for a boogie boarder that had fallen off his board.

While I'm at the beach there are two things that I like to do that I normally don't get to.  One is to read a book from cover to cover so that I can still remember what happened at the beginning of the book. Usually it takes be a couple months to get through a book because my reading time is limited to about 5 minutes each night before I fall asleep.  I've read one book already and have started on my second.

The other thing I like to do is to build sand castles.  I usually get at least one person, who is observing me building a sand castle, that asks "Do you really like doing that?".  The reason they ask this is that it does take some work if you really want to build something big enough and solid enough to carve.

Here are some photos of what I built today.  Laurie and the kids got me a book for Father's Day this year (http://www.amazon.com/Sandcastles-Made-Simple-Step-Step/dp/1584797673).  I looked for this book for years as a used book because it was out of print, but it was recently reprinted. Anyway, I got some great ideas for details that I incorporated into this one.