I got back yesterday afternoon from a four day vacation on the coast. It was absolutely great!

Got a lot done on my house (for those not following along, I recently bought a small house on the coast that I’m fixing up for a retirement home), and also got to cross a few items off my “bucket list.”

As far as the house: finished up the insulation, installed the bathroom and back bedroom doors, tore out the front living room floor (rotten), cemented the corner fence post in the front yard, sprayed some weeds/grass, and also spread out some gravel in the driveway.

As for my bucket list: I was able to take my Kayak out on the river two days in a row. The first day, I woke up late and by the time I got down to the dock, the wind was already up pretty bad and the sun was beating down. I never even bothered to go in. On the second day, though, I woke up right at daybreak, and got out onto the water right away. It was glass, with a heavy fog bank covering everything. There were a half dozen fishing boats out, but no problems. One guy even got his boat stuck in low tide. After about ten minutes of paddling, though, I was past the boats and had the river all to myself. Ended up paddling for 10 miles round trip and didn’t get back to the house until 11am.

The third day I started out the same time, and paddled around the island near town. It was wonderful, as soon as I got across the main part of the river and turned the corner back around the island, all the noisy fishing boats was washed out, and I had the sloughs all to myself. I went under three train trestles, two bridges, got to paddle along a sandy beach on the west side of the island. It was a wonderfully peaceful experience.

On the second day, I could even hear elk bugling off in the distance. Saw lots of wildlife, even had two seals following me for a while.

I did not get any writing done during my trip, and also got a really late start today. But, despite having nothing written or edited at 5pm today, I still managed to hit my goals.

(I wrote 1011 and edited 3047 words today)