Happy Birthday, Carl (on Thursday)

Carl's birthday was on Thursday this week. He had mentioned wanting to see the Atlantic Ocean while we are here in Virginia as we figured this was the closest we would get to it this year... so we planned a trip to Virginia Beach. The forecast was for overcast skies and possible rain, but we went ahead with our plans and had a wonderful day!

When we first got there, looking south down the beach...

And north up the beach...

And directly out

We decided to eat before getting our chairs and sitting out to enjoy the beach and the ocean. We found a place that had a patio right on the boardwalk so we could enjoy the views and people watching as we ate. Sorry, no pictures of our delicious food as we forgot to take any!!!

After lunch, we went back to the car and got our chairs and towels

You can see that it was cloudy, but the few times that the sun came out, it made us feel like we were being baked, so we were happy for the clouds.

There weren't a *lot* of people on the beach, and people pretty much social distance on the beach anyway...

We sure enjoyed watching some of the families around us with their kids enjoying the sand and the water!

We walked down to the ocean at one point and put our feet in the water....

But it was *cold* so we didn't go in any further!

Carl took a few minutes to shut his eyes...

A few drops of rain fell and quite a few people left... (there was a dolphin watching tour boat that went by a few times while we were there).

The kids in the picture just above were so fun to watch. Their parents / guardians were just to the right of us. The kids would dig in the sand, build sand castles, and then bury one another under the sand. At one point, the mother called to the two boys that she could see, "Where is Grayson?" They didn't answer, so she asked more urgently, "Where Is GRAYSON?!?" I had been watching them cover one of the boys with sand and could see his head sticking out, but from her viewpoint, I figured she could not see him. I said, "I think he's there - he is just covered with sand... is he the one with red hair?" She said, "yes" with great relief. She said, "They probably thought I was kidding when I asked where he was!"

Our spot on the sand.

A panorama of our view - when we first got there, there were several groups in front of us (we were about the third tier back) but after the few drops of rain, we had an oceanfront location!

We finished up the day driving a different way back (on the south side of the James River), and then stopped for Mexican food (the restaurant in Providence Forge where we ate back in March is now open for limited number of diners) and Dairy Queen. We both had a great day!