Beach Break

Laura:

Last Sunday (July 24) we did a couple fun things. First, we went to lunch at Magnolia's Cafe with my really good friend Rachel and her boyfriend Bryan. Rachel and I were lab mates during our undergrad years at Mizzou (University of Missouri). She is also currently a 4th year medical student at the University of Rochester and was a great resource to talk to while applying to their medical school. Lunch was really great and it was nice to hang out with some familiar faces (for me at least....Alex had never met Rachel and Bryan before, but I dare say we'll be seeing them again soon!).

While we were chatting with Rachel and Bryan on the walk home and they suggested we go to the beach! (Bet you didn't think that would be a perk of living in the Great White North, eh?) The weather was gorgeous, so we didn't need much convincing! For our first excursion to the beaches along Lake Ontario we decided to go to a large public beach called Ontario Beach County Park (see the last map in "A Little Geography" post). As always the beach was only about 15 minutes away, so we grabbed up all our beach gear and some snacks and headed for the coast!

On the way up, we drove along the aptly named Lake Shore Boulevard and saw a number of other beaches we'll need to visit in the future. Since it was the weekend there were tons of people along the shore partying with friends, playing around, and having a great time.

When we arrived at the Ontario Beach County Park we were a little disappointed to see rope blocking off entry to the water....BLERGH!!!! Apparently the beach was closed for the day due to high levels of E. coli bacteria in the water....sounds familiar....cough....cough....LAKE OF THE OZARKS.....cough....cough. However, we were still able to lay our towels out so we could people watch and spend some time relaxing in the sun. There was a group of people playing beach volleyball, lots of people wandering around with metal detectors, and even a church youth group playing "icebreaker" games on the beach.

Chilling out on the beach with some snacks and some sun was a great way to spend our Sunday afternoon! Even the seagulls wanted to get in on the fun.....or maybe they just wanted a Cheez-it!

He wants your cheez-it!

Involves lots of running and posing....weird!

Alex:
Beach time was a good time. We brought some snacks (chips and salsa, cheez-its) that the seagulls were very interested in. The strange games the youth group was playing were pretty entertaining, starting with "Giants, Wizards, Elves" which was pretty awful and just seemed to consist of a lot of confusion and screaming... Sort of like Red Rover. Apparently they would line up and do a Rock/Scissors/Paper type thing in a big group, then the winning team would chase the losing team. Those kids managed to get so confused it looked a little less like a scene from Braveheart and a lot more like a bunch of flies buzzing around trash. It was entertaining to watch though, but not nearly as entertaining as the next game: Bodyguard.

Maybe some of you have played Bodyguard... the concept is simple enough: It's like circle dodgeball (people standing in a circle throwing balls at people within the circle knocking them out until no one is left) except there are only two people in the circle, the president and the bodyguard. The bodyguard blocks all the impacts and has to protect the president, who just has to not get hit. The most fun part was when one guy (possibly a camp counselor) as the president grabbed his bodyguards arms behind his back and swung him around to absorb the throws in his face.

We left about the time they stopped playing bodyguard and started singing some kind of Kumbaya with drums and guitars.

After leaving the beach we took a walk down the pier, which is about a half mile out into the lake and runs along the Genesee river as it empties into the lake. At the end is a little beacon with graffiti all over it. We got a few nice pics as the sun started to go down.

Laura:
Since this little excursion to the beach, we have since learned (through local new casts and word of mouth) that the Ontario Beach really isn't very nicest and is frequently closed due to algae or bacteria. The surrounding business area is nice, but not the beach itself. A 4th year medical student recommended the Hamlin Beach (west of Rochester) if we really wanted to go swimming in the lake, but said really....it's not that great. Oh well....water is probably really cold anyway, so I'd rather just sit out on a towel and enjoy the warm sunshine (while it's still here!!!!).

THE LORAX