Thursday, January 14, 2016

Point Pleasant Beach



A very pleasant day at Point Pleasant on the New Jersey shore. We really didn’t know what to expect as we piled into the car to explore the beach but all kids were asking for some ocean time. After the South China Sea in Hong Kong and all those lakes in Munich, the kids are happiest in the water. Some woman at the grocery store suggested Point Pleasant. I remembered the name. We plugged into the navi and one hour later we were there.
Point Pleasant is a boardwalk town with that strip full of arcades and food and all that. But over the Christmas holidays, it was all shut down for the season of course, despite the temperature being in the low 70’s. Big signs declared the boardwalk off limits for dogs and we all sort of sighed and tried to regroup. Phil looked the other way, away from the boardwalk, and pointed out endless empty beach. We took off in that direction, the kids running fast and our puppy on their heels.
The beach was utterly empty. The kids picked up big shells, not found in German lakes. The weather warm enough for kids to get their feet wet. Our puppy chased the waves, both scared and happy. We took more pictures of the puppy playing on the beach than the kids and realized times are a changing. But not so much. Adam still had a football and he was constantly throwing it, to us, to the dog, to himself.
Open food joints were scarce and we had to move off beach. We found an open sandwich shop and ordered. Everything in there was great, albeit slow. The kids were amazed at the slow pace after most of their lives in big cities. While this sandwich shop was fine, we might need a few more things open to make a return trip. Lots of seasonal restaurants, bait and tackle shops, water sport rentals. It’s all there and we will probably do it but the closed for winter feeling definitely added to the place’s charm, at least for me.
Everything is going so fast these days. It seems hard to carve out an afternoon free of activity to go walk on the beach. But we all needed it. The kids, who seem so grown up these days, regressed to their natural states. Adam throwing the ball, Royce drawing in the sand, Tori doing cartwheels. All collecting shells and driftwood. When Tori was falling asleep, she groggily asked me if I saved everything she collected that day. We try to hold on to it all and don’t. But I definitely have the driftwood that looks like a “T” and the rock that looks like a heart.





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