Grunion Run

Last week we decided to re-arrange the house and switch Reed & Ashley's bedrooms. So after a full day of painting, shopping and moving furniture to the point of exhaustion, I couldn't think of anything more I wanted to do than go down to the beach and wait for 3 hours to see fish mating on the sand. Allegedly, the fish only come up at certain points in the lunar cycle. And they are quite smart because they send "scouts" to go up on the beach and check things out to see if it is safe to come ashore to lay/fertilize their eggs. If the scouts get "spooked" or don't come back.... the whole group waits off shore until it is safe. So we arrived around 10:00 on Saturday night, going on the notion that the rangers said the fish should "run" around 10:30. Welllllll..... everyone else showed up too. And if you shine your flashlight on a scout fish or pick one up, the rest of the fish won't come until it is safe. So we had to wait for all of the idiots with flashlights to get impatient and leave before the groups of fish started to come ashore....this was about 3 long, freezing hours. Around 12:15 am the larger groups started coming in. The kids made it perfectly clear that they were tired, cold and could care less about all of the fish so we went home around 12:20. I can't help but think if we waited another 1/2 hour we would have seen millions of fish on shore. But you know what they say....."once you've seen one fish have sex, you've seen them all".