A Very Big Beach

We got an invi­ta­tion to join some friends of ours for a pic­nic on the beach last week­end. Actu­ally, the invi­ta­tion said “Jeri­cho Beach/Spanish Banks”.

If you park in Span­ish Banks, Jeri­cho Beach can be a long way off. In fact, we parked (got a ride there with Matt and Oana, who we had invited to join us) and started walk­ing, call­ing peri­od­i­cally by cell phone to try and locate our other friends. “We’re near…let’s see…a red and white Cana­dian Flag Umbrella”, they said. (Matt and I agreed that she might as well have said “We’re near a blade of grass”) About an hour later, we reached the right pic­nic blan­ket, which was indeed at the edge of the Span­ish Banks. I guess I’ve learned that if you take a short bus ride or drive to Jeri­cho Beach (which is just a lit­tle beyond Kit­si­lano Beach), you can walk along beach-front for what appears to be a cou­ple of miles. It never seems to end! I got a lit­tle sun­burned, but not too badly.

For the pic­nic, I brought paté and cheese I had picked up at Granville Island, as well as fruit, some bread and crack­ers. Pam brought olives as well as some stuffed grape leaves. Matt and Oana stopped at Meinhardt’s (a very nice high-end food store not too far from us) and brought other good food. I guess the only thing we were miss­ing was Cham­pagne (actu­ally, in this heat, alco­hol would have dehy­drated us, not to men­tion car­ry­ing the bot­tles and keep­ing them cold!) Later we played Bocci ball, and Pam and I briefly dipped our toes in the Pacific (which was still pretty chilly). The beach was crowded, but as some­one com­mented, every­body in these mul­ti­tudes ‘got along’; No one tried to sell us any­thing or bother us, few peo­ple smoked, and there seemed to be enough room for the thou­sands there on a warm and sunny sum­mer after­noon of a hol­i­day week­end. I think we’ll make another visit to the beach some time before the sea­son is over, but I have to admit, I feel like I’ve seen more sand and surf here then any­where else I’ve lived.

Tomor­row we’re going on another sum­mer out­ing. This time it will be some berry-picking to the south of us (not that far south, because we’ll be stay­ing on the Cana­dian side of the bor­der) in Steveston.