February 03rd, 2020

This Taking a Long Walk on Sunday Thing is really getting to be a thing and I am loving it!

And for a lot of reasons. First of all, poor Tim had to work 'til well after midnight on Friday, a day  a very long day Saturday and part of Sunday so he was really in need to a change of scenery.  That's one of the downsides nobody talks about when you work from home.  The view never changes.

Sure it's handy dandy to just walk down the hall to your office instead of fighting traffic but it's the same hall you walk down every single day. It never looks any different.  And you see the same people over and over again.  That would be me. And while Tim has never indicated that he minds looking at me, I'm sure anything gets old after awhile.  

But I digress.

The point remains that  I think it must be especially nice for people who work from home, to occasionally, not be home just to see something different.    And since Tim worked, effectively a 7 day week last week, and he was just plumb tuckered out, and we had no errands to run, no place else we needed to be and honestly no desire to go to all the effort involved with actually negotiating seasonal traffic, instead we went for a walk.  And that is another reason, I love to walk.  It's nice to have company sometimes when I do.

As per usual, we had no particular destination. We just started walking south.

We walked down our street, we walked past Hecksher Park where we saw people playing shuffle board, tennis and basketball.  We crossed the bustling Venice Avenue where all of the cute little shops and restaurants are and we kept going south.  We saw lots of Open House signs, a considerable amount of reno being done and new homes being built (where old homes used to be).  There were squirrels galore, not a lot of bunnies and of course loads of different sorts of birds.

Eventually we wandered a little east to Venezia Park.  I drive by this park every time I go to the grocery store but I've never really paid much more than periperhal attention to it.  Currently it's in our local news a lot because some folks would like to update it's playground to make it all inclusive.  What a wonderful idea!    This is what it looks like right now:

We continued south and eventually crossed a very cute tiny little bridge that overlooks  a picturesque creek.  There is almost always something worth photographing there.

 Shortly thereafter we arrived as Service Club Beach.  So we switched up from walking on sidewalk to beach walking! Ahhhhh. Much better :)

It was actually a very pretty day, beautiful bright sunshine. And as long as something was blocking the wind, it was very comfortable.  Oh did I mention that it was windy?  It was super windy. And that breeze coming across the water was a little chilly.  I mean, not only was I wearing a lightweight jacket and scarf but as you could see in the top photo, even Tim was wearing a sweatjacket!  You know it's a little cool when Tim puts on a sweatjacket! 

While there weren't very many people on the beach, there were a few.  Some of them were in bathing suits kind of crouched behind sand dunes determined to enjoy their beach vacation!  But to balance that out, there were also people in puffy coats. So I suppose we were kind of middle of the road on outer wear.

Once we hit the beach we continued south toward the pier.  Even the birds looked cold.  

We slogged along across the sand to the pier, which by that time seemed a very long way away, fighting the wind all the while.  My long ends of my scarf were flapping so hard I'm surprised I didn't take flight!

Eventually though, we reached our destination.  The pier.  There were actually a few people in the water!  Crazy!  Some fisherfolks were trying their luck and, again, some people were going for that tan.  Although yesterday they just as likely to achieve wind burn than suntan but hey...whatever.  There was one family attempting to have a picnic.  Although they were sitting on their blanket, the edges kept flipping around and of course, there is nothing like sand in your sandwiches to make a beach picnic authentic!  And then there was the flag on the pier that was flappityflapping so hard I cannot believe it stayed attached to the pole.  And the bird that nearly collided with it!

We just stayed there awhile, soaking it all up and trying to get our fill.  But eventually, we turned around and pointed ourselves north and walked back home.  It was about 5 miles 'round trip and a perfectly perfect way to spend our Sunday afternoon.

Hope whatever you did this weekend, you also had a chance to get out and see a bit of the world around you.  It's never a bad idea to get a change of scenery.