Narragansett Beach

Yesterday was fabulous. I went to Narragansett Beach in Rhode Island for the day with people from my department at work. It started at work. We all left work together at around 11:30 am and I was packed in the back of a Prius with Ray and Khamna (from India), Florentina (from Romania) and Denise (from Turkey). They are really fun and interesting people… I liked listening to their stories for the hour and a half each way that we were driving.

When we finally got there, the place was packed… and I mean packed. I am pretty sure this beats La Jolla Shores on the 4th of July. There was a playground for kids, a huge bath house and a food stand. The water was almost too warm at about 70-72°F. But there were some waves and lots of fun people. It was cool because when one person went into the water, EVERYONE (about 25 of us) went into the water… I had brought a couple of tennis balls to throw around in the water and it was such a hit! I couldn’t believe that two old crummy tennis balls would be so much fun. We bobbed around and tried intercepting it from people… what a time! My bathing suit never dried… I’m pretty sure I spent 2.5 hours in the water total out of the 4 hours we were there.

I had also brought a volleyball and smashball to play with. That was pretty fun. We had about 4 of us hitting the volleyball around in a very open space that we found. I think we had been playing for about an hour when the ranger came up to us and told us that there was no playing ball of any sort on the beach. Can you believe that!?!?! No volleyball?????? What’s the point of a beach if you can’t play volleyball. Apparantly, the ball could hit someone. I just wanted to say, “ya, there’s that possibility… then should I not swim? Because really, I could step on a rock and cut my foot!” (insert sarcasm). I’ll never go back to that particular beach. It was nice and the water was warm, but no ball.  At least we had gotten a good hour of play in before we were told to stop. At that point, it was time for another swim anyways. 

All-in-all, it really was the best time I’ve had in grad school. The people were fabulous and we really just had a good time.