A Beachy Weekend

I was in the mood to get out this past weekend, consequently, there was no rest for my poor family until mamma got out!  On Saturday I devised an excellent sightseeing plan in Yomitan which entailed finding this cave that was used for refuge during the Battle of Okinawa and then on to this secluded beach that my friend, Michelle, told me about.  Well, at least that was the plan.  After many, many delays in getting out - like Stevie getting a scratch on his cornea and the neighbors chatting in the cul-de-sac and the usual Saturday errands - we finally piled in the Golden Nugget around 3:00 to try to find the cave and beach.

Alas, my enthusiasm to find an adventure was not enough to sustain my family and after 45 minutes of driving around down random farmer's paths trying to find the cave (and then a sudden headache for Cannon), I surrendered my quest for the cave and relented to a short walk on Torii Beach instead.  Not exactly the adventure I had imagined, but still Torii always turns up some good treasures and quite a bit of sea glass.

Fric and Frac - they are two peas in a pod right down to their matching t-shirts, shorts and hand signs!

Beautiful water

This was my most unusual beach treasure - some funky doll half buried in the sand.

After the Saturday failure, Stevie devised Sunday's itinerary which included going out for brunch at OHOPS (the Okinawan House of Pancakes) and then to a beach up north.  OHOPS, for those of you who don't follow every post I make, is the closest thing to IHOPs we'll find on this island.  Located across from one of the Marine bases up north and owned by an ex-pat, OHOPS offers biscuits and gravy, pancakes, waffles, eggs and every other kind of artery clogging breakfast item you could desire.  It's not quite Cracker Barrel, but it's good!

So after getting our tummies full, we headed on down the road a bit to a new beach.  We've been to a beach close to here several times, so I thought we'd try a slightly different beach this time.  I basically picked a point on the map and told Stevie to head the car in that direction.  Amazingly, we made it!

This beach was different in that it was bordered by tall pine trees and had big rock outcrops - almost reminded me of a beach in Maine.  It was a nice strolling beach, albeit a bit of a garbage dump (I've noticed that eastern facing beaches [Pacific] have a tendency to have more trash).  Still, we were able to find some neat treasures and have a beautiful Sunday afternoon walk (greatly needed after all those pancakes!)

Photo by Emmy!

Self timer shot!

Looking at this photo, I see that my family may not have been as thrilled about this outing as I was!