The Backyard Beach

We're back from a last minute vacation at Pawleys Island, SC. We were a little worried with it being Labor Day week that it would be crowded, but Sunday was the most crowded and by Tuesday it was deserted. We had huge stretches of sand with no one around which was great since we were running back and forth and screaming at the top of our lungs all day. And by "we" I mean Miles and Audrey, of course.

Who knew a hole in the ground could be so fun? We thought we'd be building sand castles, but instead we were digging holes along the receding tide so they'd fill up and make swimming pools.

We stayed in a new house this year which had an awesome deck, but was a tad bit farther from the beach. We had to walk over the dune to get to the beach. I mean, come on! It was probably a good thing we had a little division from the waves, as a certain redhead was pretty fearless about storming the water.

We encountered lots of wildlife on this trip.  We have never seen a starfish in the many years we've been coming here, and this year we caught a few live ones in the surf.  Then on one of our last evening walks we stepped around at least 100 dead starfish (no exaggeration) along with several small crab carcassas and even a dead baby turtle.  Ugh.  At least we found some cool shells on that walk. Oh, and Audrey had no qualms about picking up stacks of dead starfish, and another day even picked up a flapping fish and tossed it to a seagull.  Our most exciting interaction was with a possum that crawled into our garbage can.  I was cleaning out the car and tossed some trash in one can, glanced in the other and was greeted with a nasty hiss.  I shrieked and ran.  When we came back down much later with Wayne, it appeared to be asleep.  He lifted the can and set it on its side so the creature could escape while we were at dinner.  Thankfully it was gone when we got back and the lids were then firmly in place!

The adventurous duo:

And the best way to end the day: popsicles!

Lots more photos at the shutterfly site: Miles & Audrey