DAY TWO OF CALIFORNIA BEACH ADVENTURE

Upon arrival at our camp site, we were actually pleasantly surprised by the accomodations. As mentioned in previous post, we had a shower and there were fairly clean toilets nearby too. Our children we thrilled with the native wildlife.. we pulled in and almost crushed 2 jackrabbits, a quail and a squirrel thingy. There was more vegetation than I ever had imagined being so close to the beach. HOWEVER.. it wouldn't be an Ashby vacation if it happened to be pure bliss. After a few minutes setting up camp, we recognized we were not alone. Not only did we have the warm-blooded mammals to keep us feeling cozy, but we had several variations of arachnids and swarms of ants... very aggressive and hungry ants. At one point, I had to send Tanner to get our bread as it was being carried off down an ant hole. Not only did our ants love our food, but after one evening of the food box being out, we discovered our squirrel thingies had eaten through our hot dog buns and potato chips (that really ticked me off!!). So I decided it would be wise to keep the food boxes in the trailer when we weren't eating. I thought 'twas a super smart idea. However, that night as we were sleeping, the little ants who had been occupying our food box, decided they would come out and explore the trailer. Oh yah.. super awesome. I think the ants were ticked that we moved them away from their lush vegetation. I don't know what the big deal was, they still had twinkies and jerky to munch on. Oh yeah and my family tasted good too. So my 15 year old daughter woke up on the wrong, wrong, oh-so-wrong side of the cot that morning due to the ant infestation. Makes for a super-dee-duper day!!



As I mentioned before we also had several versions of the same nightmare.. that is spiders. Spiders, spiders everywhere. Now these were not any spiders, these were serious spiders. Think the Arnold Schwartzneggar of spiders. Spiders that made me feel itchy just looking at them. They spun elaborate webs to catch their prey ("out -of- towners") and sat there all day looking freakin hideous. So my sister in law, Lori, comes to our camp to say their camp had the mother of all arachnoids. We must come see it. So after dinner, when we had nothing else to do, we got a flashlight and headed for her camp. Yes, there in the tree, above our heads about 3 feet was the most repulsive thing I have ever seen. As I shined the flashlight up to see it, it just sat there staring at me with it's eight eyes, slowly moving its freaky-looking spindly legs. I swear it was coming up with the menu as it checked me out. I think as I stared it kind of hypnotized me, because I just became entranced watching it. Then it happened. I felt a tickle on my right ear. Holy Mother!! It sent it's mate to crawl into my brain!! So I bashed the side of my head with the large flashlight that I was holding and screamed bloody murder. Of course, no spider. Just my stupid sister-in-law. I made her whole vacation with that stupid stunt. My head wound is just now starting to heal.

This is what the spider looked like, just so you can feel my freak..

No I am not kidding. It almost ate me, I am sure this is what it looked like.