The Good & the Bad at McGrath State Beach

We have just returned from our 2nd annual camping trip at McGrath State Beach with the O'Malley family. Last April marked our first McGrath trip and first ever camping trip with the O'Malleys. Since then, we have camped with them way too many times to count. We always have a BLAST with them and can't imagine camping without them. In fact, we've grown so close to Bill, Janet, Kate and Conor and we spend so much time together as families that we've become one happy family that we've named "The Mooralley's."



While this trip was yet another fun time camping, this trip also posed many challenges, one after another, after another, etc. There were plenty of fun times, like celebrating John's birthday, getting Shadow and Boomer to the point that they could actually run around off leashes together (well, not all the time, but definitely much better!), lots of yummy food, endless rides in the golf cart, daily walks, digging in the sand at the beach, nightly bonfires with s'mores, I could go on and on. However, we certainly seemed to have our share of setbacks!!! Where do I even begin? We arrived safely on Sunday and LOVED our location with a nice open field in front of us and a walking trail just beyond that. We got set up and enjoyed the day. Then came Monday.....let the fun begin! After a yummy breakfast of "Egg Mc Mooralley's" we decided to hit the beach. During this time of year at McGrath, the lagoon hasn't dried up yet between the campsite and the beach. This isn't a big deal, it just requires a little more walking to find a dried up path through the lagoon. After watching Conor and his friend, Stephen, make a successful shortcut across some logs making a "bridge" through the lagoon, I thought I would take the shortcut too. Why I decided to do this, I DO NOT KNOW, especially since there was a clearing about 10 yards away (at the most). All the other adults and kids chose the safe route. Not me! Now, let me state, that both of my arms are full with my beach bag, carrying all the towels and the camera in one arm and my wetsuit in the other. Two logs made up this "bridge" and I was at the tail end of the first log, ready to step onto the second log, when I lost my balance and fell into the lagoon. Now all of our nice dry towels are soaked, as well as me and the camera! We quickly removed the memory card and battery from the camera and were successfully able to save it, praise God! We hung the towels from the umbrellas to dry and I gathered some sticks to hang my clothes and bag to dry. I didn't worry about the wetsuit since that was going to get wet anyway. As I'm getting ready to enter the water to do some training before September's Rough Water Swim, John and Bill questioned the safety of the surf conditions. The waves were rough, but since no one said I absolutely should not go in, I entered the freezing water knowing that within 5 minutes or so, the warmth of my wetsuit would set in. I enjoyed about 30 minutes of successful training before my "near death experience." Yes, I mean that literally, which I plan to go into further depth in my next post. So let's just leave "beach day" alone and move onto problems with our trailer. First we had some water pump problems, which Bill and John fixed rather quickly and then came the most major problem, the electronic beds! Let me start by saying our trailer, which is actually a "toy hauler" is only 1 year old and we are the original owners. Since the trailer is a toy hauler, the two queen sized beds are on an automatic switch that we press to lift the beds to the ceiling so we can open up the back ramp and load our golf cart, and press again to have the beds come down for sleeping. The fuse panel for the beds must have been a lemon as it went out and our beds were stuck in the up position. After over an hour of going through all the wires and it getting to be a late hour, we decided to make up the 2 sofa bed conversions and sleep there instead. Long story short, a call to a local RV retailer told us it would take 4 weeks for the replacement part to be ordered. We figured out how to manually bypass the the electronic system and manually get the beds up and down (not an easy task, but it worked).


Next I come to the "bird nest" incident. Let me start by saying that Janet and I together are TROUBLE! Separate, we are fine, but together we manage to get ourselves in trouble....frequently! This is such a joke with John and Bill that they have come to call us Lucy and Ethel. We were walking on a nature trail when we came across a bird nest that appeared to be abandoned. We are normally not this stupid, but we were intrigued by the interesting appearance of this "abandoned" nest and we began poking and dissecting the nest with sticks. To our horror, we uncovered 3 TINY baby birds, not more than a day old and one unhatched egg. We did our absolute best to return the nest to it's previous condition and prayed that since we never touched the nest with our hands, the mother would not abandon the nest. We stood back for awhile and it didn't take long for mom to return. She stood all around the nest, but we didn't see her go in it. We returned the next day to see if we could find mom in the nest, but she wasn't there. I was completely prepared to run to the closest pet store and purchase everything I possible might need to care for these baby birds just in case mom chose to abandon them to death. Janet quickly talked me out of it and Bill convinced me that this is the circle of life and leaving the birds for mom is the best option. This last event is so heart wrenching that I'll spare you of the tedious little problems, like burnt bagels and John's ice cream cake in flames, setting off the smoke detector.

So this might sound like a bad trip, but no time with the O'Malley's can be considered "bad." There was no shortage of laughter and FUN, FUN, FUN. When it came Thursday morning, we were all disappointed to pack up and head home.