The Beach!

I've been experiencing a bit of moderate depression the last few days, most likely due to a lot of stress over a variety of things on my plate.  Other than being very moody and breaking down in tears often, the major telltale sign was that although I wanted to get out and do something fun (or at least different besides a walk around the campground or even to the lake), I didn't want to do anything either.  All I wanted to do was crawl under a rock and hide somewhere.

I knew, however, that the best thing I could do was to get out and have a change of scenery.  I always find the water very calming and it's been on my bucket list to visit the white sugar sand and crystalline waters of Clearwater Beach.  However, there was no way that I wanted to travel the 50 miles to get there, especially knowing that it other than the drive schlep, we'd have to bring food/drinks, chairs (I can't sit on a towel on the ground), and without an umbrella or shady area, I can't handle the sun.  In other words, a 1.5 hour drive for a 5 minute walk (not to mention how far the parking lot would be) just didn't seem worth it.

So we scrapped that beach but still wanted a beach, any beach.  We found the closest one to us was 25 miles away, called Ben T. Davis beach, which is a strip off the causeway between Tampa and Clearwater (still took almost an hour to get there).  The beach itself is only about 1000 feet (or 3 blocks) long (the first photo was taken at the entrance to the beach area where you can see the entire length).

Normally, I always look for the silver linings and I know I am being a "Debbie Downer" here, and my excuse is that it's probably all part of the depression.  But the experience (at least for me) was truly miserable (Mitch said he enjoyed just having time to spend with me outside the house, even if it was mostly in the car).  For one, I really couldn't hear the rush of the waves because we were right off the highway and the sound of the cars was much louder.  Secondly, it was not possible to go swimming (although the water was wonderfully warm).  The reason for that was due to the huge rocks that you had to climb over to get to the clearer part of the water.  If you look closely at the 2nd picture, the dark areas were actually huge rocks spaced closely together.  We tried, but determined it was too dangerous (for us, anyway) to try to walk over them.  The sand was also covered with broken shells and seaweed.  Lastly, although I covered myself completely with towels while sitting on the chair, the sun was too strong and after 5 minutes I really needed to get out of the sun.  So total time spent actually on the beach was no more than 15 minutes.

Update on the truck:  got a quote from the mechanic.  It will cost $22K to fix it.  Now just waiting to hear from the insurance company whether they're going to declare it totaled.  Of course, this is one of the items of stress, because without the truck, we have no way to move our home and I doubt we'll be able to find another truck that's big enough to pull it within our price range and still in good working order.  But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it (probably later today).  Will keep you posted.