I grew up in San Francisco, and many of my high school friends still live in the area. Nowadays, they are scattered far and wide around the Bay Area, so they don’t get together very frequently…but when one of us “out-of-towners” comes for a visit, they all make a concerted effort to get together.
This time I wasn’t so sure we were going to have a very big group. Not very many people responded initially to my Evite, and I already knew that some people were going to be out of town. Nevertheless, we went ahead with our plans, figuring it would be a smaller party. Surprisingly, though, a few people responded at the last minute, and one of my friends even managed to get her husband to drive her from the South Bay to Marin after a late-night shift.
We met at Paradise Beach Park, which is a park that we have been going to hang out since high school. It was a beautiful day, but there were not that many people there. I shouldn’t have been surprised; for as long as we’ve been going there, it has always been pretty empty. I feel like it’s Marin County’s best-kept secret, because it’s not very far from the highway, and yet it’s pretty secluded, and right up against the water. There are picnic tables with barbecues set up all over the park, and people can fish from the dock or go swimming at the beach. And, most importantly, there is lots of lawn area, which was great for one of my friends who has two kids.
It’s great to catch up with old friends. I haven’t seen some of these people since before my wedding, so we had a lot to catch up on! I got there at 1:00 pm, and I wasn’t ready to go until we had left the park, had dinner, and the kids were ready for bed, around 9:00! What a great day.
