We've got crabs

Today was all about Dylan getting his fishing fix. We had a bit of a lazy morning with the usual fry up on the Weber, then with fishing gear in hand, Dylan and I set off to try our luck at Carrickalinga to see if we could catch ourselves a salmon or two. The weather and water conditions were pretty near perfect, yet the fish weren't out to play. we had a number of small bites and finally Dylan discovered the source of our disappearing bait. A couple of nice big sand crabs later, and we decided to call it quits. Despite the lack of fish, it was nice spending some boy time out on our own.

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That afternoon, we all decided to go for a look the other way down the coast, and headed South. Tyler, Taz and I were in my car and we stopped at Lady bay for a bit of crabbing. This is one of those beaches that you never forget thanks to the very shallow still waters filtering through the rocky reef, providing a huge habitat for the thousands of tiny crabs.

Next stop was Second Valley. a tiny little beach nestled amongst the cliff faces, with a popular little jetty and swimming area. We spent a couple of hours doing not much at all whilst the kids went swimming, until it finally approached wine o'clock

Tonight was another beautiful sunset, and the warm weather saw us all wondering down the beach, relaxing, after a hard day of relaxing.

Catching Waves

The water was beautiful and calm this morning, perfect for the kayaks. Trouble is, we are about 500m away from the waters edge, with a boardwalk, gate and sand dunes in the middle of us and the sea. The kayaks are too heavy for 1 person to carry, but ok with the help of one of the boys. I finally managed to convince Tyler to help me carry one down so i could get out for an early morning paddle.
Some time later, the rest of the crew arrived, along with the second kayak. We all spent a good couple of hours paddling and generally enjoying the beautiful weather.

Taz was so anxious at being left alone on shore, he overcame his fear of water and swam out to me on the kayak and jumped on board.. Not overly sure this was a good idea as it now means I need to take him on every paddle. Best get him a life jacket methinks

Some of the gang below

After lunch, we decided to head off to Carrickalinga, which is 5 minutes down the road and provides a few surf waves for the kids (and us bigger kids). This was a fantastic way to escape the heat and the kids even got to meet the local dolphins swimming only 10-15 metres behind them

After a few exhausting hours, we all headed back for a very late wine o'clock, an even later Weber BBQ dinner,

Escaping the heat

It has been an average of about 39 degrees over the last week, with the last 2 days reaching over 41. 

And of course, this is the week we have chosen to go camping. At least our location for the week is down south by the sea, where it is forecast to be almost 20 degrees cooler. 

Leaving home at about 11, we set off for the 80km trip to Normanville where we were going to be for a week with the Hardy’s and Rist’s. 

With the Kayaks on the roof, 3 weeks worth of clothes and half the house jammed in the van, we were off. 

We arrived at our site at 12:30, which happened to be the hottest part of the day and got everything set up. 

There was enough grass to be classed as a nice site, and enough dirt to be classed as not such a nice site. 

But... we were about 2 minutes walking across boiling sand that was hot enough to burn all the fungus off our feet and into beautiful calm and clear water. 

The overcast conditions unfortunately didn’t lower the temperature much below 33, and it was a perfect day for cooling off. 

Tonight it actually ended up cool enough to be wearing a jumper, with a few spots of rain that sent us scampering for shelter for about a minute, every 15 minutes.