A Sunny Late June Day at Ocean Beach

Ocean Beach came through with actual sun, which is not a thing it owes anyone in late June — this stretch of San Francisco's west side is supposed to be socked in with fog this time of year. Instead the whole beach was out: blankets, umbrellas, people all the way down toward the surf.

We set up with the other moms on a spread of towels, a picnic basket, and a scatter of buckets and shovels that got put to work almost immediately. The main project of the afternoon was burying the girls up to their chests in sand. They sat there grinning, arms free, one of them in a Red Sox cap pulled down against the glare, and kept patting the sand back down whenever it slid. The baby stayed up on the blanket, wrapped and shaded, mostly asleep through all of it.

The water stayed off-limits — the currents here are no joke — but nobody minded. Digging holes was the whole event. The sand toys went home half-buried in the bags along with about a pound of the beach itself.