The Mission and the Beach

What an adventure! Plans had been made, invitations had been posted and we were off! Poor Kevan had been sick and, although much better and no longer contagious I knew he wasn't up for the long day ahead. Ben and I set off about 9 am for the Mountain Men day at a nearby mission. I had not heard from anyone stating that they were going, and I didn't really have any expectations for the day other than to have a good time.

When we pulled up to the mission and saw more than 10 large buses and tons of cars, I knew we would never be able to figure out if anyone was from one of the groups unless it was someone we already knew. Ben didn't know what to expect, but ended up really enjoying the mission!

He liked this old fashioned bench!

Learned how to wash his hands using flowers!

Saw an apprentice blacksmith at work making nails.
Helped make soap out of beef fat.

Made tortillas by grinding corn into flour,

mashing the corn flour into tortilla shape,

and then he got to eat one!

By the time we had toured the mission rooms that are set up as they were, saw the woodworkers, cooks, etc. we realized we would never have time to see everything. Thank goodness the mountain men will be back in August! We had to get going so we could grab some lunch before heading off to the beach.
We went into town for some sandwiches at Quiznos (and some Starbucks for mom) and then headed off toward the beach. Wow! I had no idea it would take so long to get there. For some reason I thought it was really close to town, lol.

So, we did not get to the beach until 1:20 or 1:30ish. If anyone was there looking for us, we didn't know about it. It could not have been a more gorgeous day!

We went down to the beach, spread out and played around. We looked for a very nearby geocache but it seemed to be in someone's campground so we gave up the search. We started walking down the beach to collect rocks (and found some beautiful ones!)

There was a geocache 1.6 miles down the beach so we decided to head out there. I had gotten the geocache coordinates very quickly in the morning, and had not read the descriptions, which was a bad idea. By the time we'd gone about a mile, it started to get very rocky.

Did I mention that we were barefoot? You know, walking on the beach and all... but Ben wanted to keep going.

We found this cool fort out there somewhere! This was after we hadn't seen in any other people for quite awhile.

We started seeing these strange greenish super fast running stinkbug-sized bug-like things; they kind of looked like roly polys only big, green and super fast. I was freaked out when they ran across my path in between two large rocks where I had nowhere to run. I wanted to go back. Ben wanted to keep going. He was freaked out by the bug things too, but we soon realized that if we talked loud they would run away from us before we got there.
I started getting a little nervous about the tide coming in. We had to go through ocean to get around rocks a few times, and we hadn't seen another person in a LONG time. Also, I had absolutely no cell service. Ben wanted to keep going.
Finally, we got within about 300 feet of where the geocache was supposed to be, and started searching. We found caves, holes in rocks, and a dead-end of walkable rock. Past where we were there was just cliff and ocean.

We searched,

and searched (did I mention we were barefoot) and could not seem to get any closer to it than 260 feet. We did not want to go back after all of that work! We kept looking. I climbed up to a particularly high cave where I didn't want Ben to follow. I was being *very* careful as I also did not want Ben to be stuck out there alone with me injured. Also I was barefoot <g>. As I got up there I noticed, even higher above my head, a little (and I do mean little, maybe a foot wide) path. I followed to see where we could access it from where we were. Again I had Ben stay on the ground and went up to check out the path. Well, it was gravelly, slippery and narrow. There were areas where the path kind of disappeared and you'd have to kind of scramble across. This was pretty high up (and I was barefoot) so I decided this was not going to happen today. I could see that the path went far enough to be a perfect hiding spot for the geoacache, and as I walked a little of it, sure enough the distance on the gps got shorter and shorter.
So, disappointed, sorefooted and tired, we headed back for the car. Back across all those rocks. With our bare feet.
Ok, it really was an exciting adventure. We never would have gone the whole way if anyone else had been with us, even Kevan most likely. Very rarely do Ben and I spend alone time together, and never for a whole day like that. He was proud of his bravery, and so was I! We definitely plan to go back, but next time we will carry our tennis shoes so we can put them on for rock climbing, and have at least two adults in case someone did get hurt. If I had read the description ahead of time, I never would have attempted it - it says not to bring small children, and to bring shoes. The difficulty rating is 3.5/5 but many commenters have remarked that it should be at least a 4 and I agree! So... that was our day yesterday!

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