Now that is a sand bag!

Waihi Beach is a little different than the ones that we usually one on in our neck of the woods. Our beaches just kind of begin at the end of the land.  Just a gentle slope and you are there. Waihi probably was that way also with homes built on the bluffs above the beach. Then slowly the beach began to be washed away during big storms. To prevent damage to the homes etc and further erosion of the beach the city brought in sand bags.  I thought these were pretty fun but I really wanted to show how big they are.

So I asked Michael to stand next to them. 

These areas where the sand is a bit unstable they post these signs so everyone knows what is up. Looks to me that they need some more vegetation here.

After get do all that they can with the sandbags then they bring in large boulders.

According to the local folks this house has been moved back on the bluff twice!  Now it just kind of sits right on the edge of these big boulders!  It looks like a nice home and certainly would be a sweet place to live!

How Old Are They?

The morning we were at Waihi it was cool and wet. It had rained for three days. In our walk we came upon two men and their children. They were brothers so the kids were cousins. They were the second people that we had stopped to chat with and both of the people were from Hamilton. It is about 90 minutes from Hamilton but they always come over to Waihi Beach on the weekends. Obviously they were not members of the church with Sunday responsibilities. We stopped to chat with them just as their three kids ran out into the surf with their boards. They all had on wetsuits.

It looks to me though that the water is chilly and they are not sure if they really want to be there. The little gal on the left in pink is six, the boy in the middle is eight and the girl in purple is seven. They were having so much fun.  Notice that the water is not very deep here and that is the way the beach is for a long ways out.

He rode this wave in for a long time. This is the only picture where you can see his face and it was too good to pass on.

This is a pretty nice ride by the six-year old. We were amazed and wondered if our Grands would want to even try this is they were here. We decided that they would.  It is nothing like that amazing 100-foot wave that that man rode earlier this week but we thought this was AWESOME!

A Picture Worth A Thousand Words

When we went to Waihi Beach a few weeks ago it was all because of a painting we had purchased from a gallery for local artists. We took it home and saw on the back the notation that it was Waihi Beach. We decided that it was only appropriate to go and check it out and take a photo from the same vantage point. And that is what we did.

This is the photo that I took.

And this is the painting.  She took a little artistic license and added a closer pathway and the over-head tree.  They were there but just not in the location on the painting. The island out in the water was there. The day we were there the sky was not as blue but that could be because when we were there all it did was rain!  The birds were there as well but I could not get them to cooperate and sit on the posts like that.

Maybe I need a different lens for the camera or something.