lake anna

Saturday, we wanted to hit the beach.  But so does everyone else for Memorial Day weekend.  I was reluctant to make the two hour drive to VA Beach with Carmen...factor in the unpredictability of 64E traffic, and I was picturing a tiring nightmare.  

So I suggested Lake Anna.  We'd never been, but it had the same idea...sandy beach + water + a little bit closer.

The kids had all sorts of questions, the first of which was probably "Will there be sharks?"  Not likely.

We were happily surprised by the beachiness of the lake.  The May water was way too cold for me, but the kids jumped right in.  There was even a little surf with waves to destroy nearby sand creations.

Did you know Lake Anna is a man-made lake created to cool the nearby nuclear power plant?  There are two sides to the lake, a public side (which is cooler), and a private side (which is warmed from the water discharged from the power plant).  That sounded a little radioactive, but I googled it, and it said it could have a build up of heavy metals and salts but is not considered radioactive because it never comes into contact with those materials.  Phew! since I didn't learn that until I wrote this.

Carmen is quite particular on what she walks on...like grass bothers her little tootsies....

and so does sand, apparently.  Yeah, she doesn't really care for sand yet...so good call on the closer beach.

She spent most of her time at the cooler full of ice-cold watermelon.

It's nice that there's a huge grassy area right next to the beach.  We decided to set up there so everything didn't get too sandy.

Wasn't Saturday a perfect day?

Carmen liked the view from the chair the best.  She spends a lot of time climbing in and out of this at soccer games, too.

Put me in the zoo!  There's a nice playground close to the beach, too!

Here's Joaquin enjoying his sandwich.  We didn't get to the park until 4pm.  That was on purpose...we'd miss the burning midday sun, but there would still be plenty of time to play...the beach closes at 7pm.

I caught Diego crawling around in the sand and scrunching his 'paws' leaving bear tracks. 

And later I saw him digging a hole off to himself with a shovel full of wet sand lying beside him.  It was his own golden treasure.  He buried the wet sand and made an 'X marks the spot' on top, hoping no one would steal it and so he could find it when we come back.  Joaquin pointed out, "If there's an X on it, that's where everyone will look!"

There were life guards on duty...

but you can see in this picture of Isabela, the water up to the first rope was pretty shallow.  She's sitting on the bottom.  

Packing up and time to go home.  Next time, we need to remember to bring a ball, a frisbee, and we even saw one family that had hooked a hammock up between two trees.  Now that's relaxing!

And here was Joaquin's favorite part...sliding down the railings on the steps.  You should have heard all the kids asking their moms, "Can I do that?"  I think they all said no.  In their defense, I told him not to do it the first time, too; but then I realized it was fun, and it was safer than it looked, so why not?

The kids are already asking to go back to Lake Anna.  It's a keeper.