Anytime I visit Gnat in Gilroy, we go to the beach. Just do. Any chance I get. Always. Every time.

We went to this beach last year about the same time. Rio Del Mar has a semi-sunken cement ship, such a curiosity. You can read about it here: https://www.cabinart.net/away-in-gilroy-chapter-one/ (Scroll down about halfway)

There were quite a few dead seals on the beach. Seals or seal lions? Is there a difference? I’m ignorant on this.

There were four young women (everyone seems young to Gnat and I) wresting to load a still living seal into a giant cat carrier. (That’s what it looked like.) They hauled it away on a wagon, heading to a place in Sausalito where vets try to revive the creatures. There is some sort of toxin that builds up in the water from time to time (I remember this in 2009 at Cayucos and Morro Bay), and seals eat critters that are loaded with the stuff and then crawl up on the beach and croak. (I’m ignorant of this too.)

The explainer asked us to come up with a name for the creature, saying that her team had run out of ideas that fit the parameters of their rescue organization (sorry, didn’t get the name of the organization). Gnat immediately popped off with, “Hope”, which was a very acceptable name.

On the way to the beach, we encountered a hammer in the middle of an intersection, with no place to pull off the road and rescue it. Neither of us has need of a hammer; neither of us can stand waste (hence, thrift-shopping). When we tried to find the intersection on the way home from the beach, it was a bit disconcerting to realize that all the intersections looked alike and there was no visible hammer in the road. At least someone else found it and it wasn’t lying there with a broken handle.

More of our upper-middle-aged adventures tomorrow.