The Surf and The Sun

This weekend, Nicole and Steve invited me to go to a park called Fort Funston in San Francisco, which is a beach park that allows dogs off leash. I took Sammy and, as far as I know, that was the first time she’s been to the beach or seen the ocean.

The beach at Fort Funston was great. There was a lovely view of mountains in the distance both north and south of the beach. There was an awesome assortment of dogs throughout the day, mutts and purebreds alike. The weather was perfect, too. The beach is usually so cold because of the wind. On Sunday, it was windy, but not exceptionally so. It was fairly warm, about 80 degrees, so the wind just served to cool things down to a perfect temperature. The water was still freezing though!

Not surprisingly, Sammy had no use for the water, which probably was only in part due to the temperature. She is prissy about being wet *or* cold, so she wouldn’t have liked it either way. When she first saw the water, she walked up to it, just far enough to be standing in about an inch of water. She tried to drink it and then reacted by shaking her head with her eyes squinted closed and gnashing her teeth at the salty taste. She started to walk out of the water, with her back to the waves. She then paused, tried to drink it again, and, in the midst of having the same reaction again, was smacked in the bottom by a large wave. She left the water indignantly and didn’t go back the entire time we were there. At one point, I took her by the collar and tried to get her excited about running after the waves as they went out and running away from them as they rolled in, like the other dogs were doing, but she was not interested and walked off wondering what was wrong with me.

She did enjoy the sand though. She fell asleep on the warm sand for a while. Later, we buried her and she didn’t care at all. Finally, it was time to go. There is a fairly steep climb to get to and from the beach. It was somewhat trying to climb down when we first got there. The sand moving underneath your feet means you have to push off extra hard with your calves to get anywhere. Getting back up was less fun, of course. I had to pause a few times to catch my breath. Sammy pushed right through it and left me in the dust. She was slow, but steady, and waited for me when she got to the top.

The only downside of the whole thing was caused by my own absent mindedness. I tried to be well prepared for this outing. I put sunscreen on all my exposed skin before leaving the house. I wore jeans and a t-shirt for the occasion, thinking there would be a cold wind. However, at some point, I did some wading in the water, so I rolled up my pant legs to keep them from getting wet. The mistake came when I never put them back down, since it was plenty warm. We were there for about 3 hours, mostly laying on the sand. The result was that I got a severe sunburn from knee to ankle on the front of both legs. There is a lot of tightness to the skin, pain, and swelling so it’s probably 2nd degree. I read up on how to treat burns last night, and the advice to keep them bandaged was invaluable. Today was way less painful with the bandages on. Hopefully the healing will begin soon and be quick!

Last, Nicole took lots of great pictures of the outing!