This morning after breakfast we went down to the beach. We thought we’d go for a walk but didn’t know which direction to go. The day before we’d gone right so this time we went left. There was a giant pier in the distance and we thought we could walk to it. It was about 9:28 when we started. Along the way we saw starfish and stranded jellyfish. I told Elianna about the starfish story where the little boy starts throwing them back.

People think he’s nuts because there are way starfish than he is able to save. But he holds up the starfish and says something like, “But for this one I was able to make a difference.” She’d never heard that story before, and neither had she seen an actual starfish “in the wild”. I don’t remember how long it took us, but it was at least three miles down to the pier.

In order to walk the whole thing you had to pay $6. I didn’t have any money on me and only had my phone. The lady at the counter said that I could use apple pay. I didn’t know how to do that and she briefly walked me through it. So then we texted Dad and asked if he could send us the debit card number with the expiration date and security code. He said to give him two minutes. We said that we wanted to walk out on this pier.

So he sent it and I set up my apple pay. I said to Elianna, “Do you even know what this means??” It seemed wild that all of a sudden all I had to do was touch my phone to a pay thing and that it counted as money. I sent Dad a text with double exclamation points and a smiley emoji with hearts that said, “Thank you!!” He said with a single exclamation to have fun.

We walked to the edge of the pier and then eventually turned back. We asked a lady to take a picture so we didn’t bother the fisherman. They thankfully had a bathroom which is what I was hoping they’d have. We made the journey back in I don’t know how much time. I hadn’t walked that far since the day we climbed our mountain. I had my sweater on my head to protect my head from the sun. We carried our sandals and walked along.