Sand and sun and all that

We went to the beach yesterday, for the day. The weather was pretty much perfect. The nice thing about Oregon beaches is that they're rarely too hot. They can certainly be too cold, but yesterday it was perfect. We were going to go to Arcadia Beach, which is one of the best in northern Oregon, with tide pools, caves, and a little stream that trickles into the ocean out of a forested mass of plants. Unfortunately, it's everyone else's favorite beach too, ad there was absolutely nowhere to park.
So we went about a mile south, and encountered a different, smaller beach. It was definitely less crowded, so we parked and walked down. There was plenty of room to put down a blanket. We hung out for a while and my mom and I started noticing something odd. A large number of pelicans were flying north. There was a steady trickle of the birds all day. Now why would pelicans be flying north in late summer? We have yet to figure it out.
Eventually, we hauled out the kite that we had bought earlier in the year. I was surprised by how well-made it was. It was a nice kite, quite a bit better than the $1.50 plastic kites we usually get. It flew quite well in the wind, and I learned how to twirl it when it started to drop, so as to keep it in the air.
As the tide went out, a stretch of dry ground opened up in front of the cliff at the north end of the beach. I decided to walk around the cliff to see if there was anything there, and there certainly was. There was a whole other beach there, slightly smaller and only accessible at low tide. A small but very wide waterfall trickled down from a huge mass of rock attached to the eastern cliffs, and proceeded to create a wide stream that emptied int the ocean.
I climbed up over the waterfall and found that the stream wound through a forested gap in the cliffs. I would have kept going but I wasn't wearing any shoes, and the rocks were starting to get pointy.
We stayed there most of the day, and spent much of the evening in Cannon Beach. This included eating at a so-so restaurant and bar, getting ice cream, me going into the most horrifying public bathroom in the state(toilet paper splattered on the walls and ceiling) and watching the sunset while it was cloudy. We started home at about 6:30. All in all, I quite enjoyed the day.