Yardstick parking at the beach…

Melissa G. Henderson65 Comments

Beautiful sunny morning at the beach. What a great day to enjoy a leisure stroll and soak up God’s creations! Sand, sunshine, sounds of waves jumping to reach the shore, children laughing, parents watching carefully, dogs running to catch sticks thrown in the water, and possibly a dolphin sighting.

All these glorious sights and sounds were enjoyed recently as we walked hand in hand on the local beach.

Of course, with the Henderson’s, there has to be more to the story. Upon arriving at the beach area, we looked for parking as usual. Early morning and already a parking place was hard to find.

While riding down the main street, a few parking places became available. Great location, not too far from the beach. This would work out perfectly.

Alan parked the car according to the rules of the road. There are signs positioned along the way alerting everyone to “Park 4 feet away from the main road.” Sometimes, there is  a white chalk line drawn to give further instruction about the 4 feet rule.

This day, after parking and believing we were following the rules by parking the correct distance from the road, we exited the car, put on our sun hats and prepared to walk.

Yes, a fantastic, fun, energizing excursion. Happiness filled our souls. Sweat and all.

Heading back to the car after our morning exercise, I noticed the “Beach Patrol” truck nearby. “Oh, no. Hope everything is okay. Looks like someone might be getting a ticket.”

Little did we realize the “someone” getting the ticket was us.

Evidently, our perception of 4 feet is not so good. A bright orange ticket on our vehicle alerted us to pay the $50.00 fine for not following the rules of parking 4 feet away from the road.

Embarrassing….. our lovely walk went from feelings of happiness to feelings of “Oh, my! How did we do that?”

From now on, we are thinking of carrying a yardstick to the beach, just to make sure we follow the rules. 🙂 We can measure the distance from the car to the road to make sure no more bright orange citations adorn our vehicle.

Have you ever accidentally broken a rule? How did you feel? I am thankful for God’s forgiveness and patience with me, as I am a work in progress.

Blessings, beach walking, sunshine and tons of giggles,
Mimi

65 thoughts on “Yardstick parking at the beach…”

  1. Sounds like a lovely day, except of course the ticket. Sounds like there should be much better signage or chalk lines to show where to park. I guess they expect everyone to have their own personal measuring stick to measure the distance for parking. Craziness, lol.
    I love how you described the walk on the beach. I felt I was there with you. Have a lovely day. xx

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  2. Mimi- We humans carry that inward conscious-thing with us all the time; it’s the Creator’s gift like a “built-in” GPS system. We need it and should be grateful for it, but the flip-side of guilt when we TRY to do the right thing and fail, is indeed troublesome! We Thank God for forgiveness!
    Love to you- ART STANLEY

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    • I always feel bad when breaking a rule. I never intend to be a rule breaker. 🙂 Our son found this photo for the blog. He’s an expert at computer, writing code and designing websites.

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  5. Oh dear. Sorry to hear about your ticket. But your walk sounded lovely and as someone has already mentioned, it was like I was on the beach too.
    Hope you are enjoying the weather over there.

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  6. Thanks for the opportunity to share a virtual walk with you by the beach. Your vivid descriptions made me feel like I was there. Turned out to be quite the expensive walk for you though. Your story reminded me of an incident that happened recently. They turned a particular community into a one-way street close to where I live. A few of the residents were out of town while this change occurred. Only to return to be slapped with a ticket for parking on the wrong side of the street counter to the directional traffic change.

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    • That would be a new experience to find the street changed into a one-way. We have a lot of one way streets downtown and we are always making sure we are going the correct way. 🙂

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  7. Gosh, Melissa. It seems they’re a tad strict with that parking stuff, uh? Most people can’t perfectly judge 4 feet. I guess you could walk it out with your own feet like my father-in-law used to do to measure the square footage of a room, etc.

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    • Wow! Only $6..00. That’s amazing! Wish that was the cost of our ticket. 🙂 We learned a lesson and will find somewhere else to park next time. The whole thing gives us another “Henderson” story. 🙂

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  11. When I hear of yard sticks, it reminds me of my elementary school days! We do ‘metres’ now of course, but yard stick still sounds so much nicer than metre stick! Thanks for taking me on your walk with you. It really is the simple things that make life so lovely!

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  13. I loved walking with you and I can just imagine your hat. I’m sorry you got a ticket. I wish you were given a chance to tell them some how you didn’t mean to do it! Sounds like a lovely beach though.

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  14. Oh no! I’ve done something similar when parking. We parked on one side of the road, but little did we know there was a sign on the opposite side saying no parking. The angry house owners on the side we parked on called the police and we got a ticket. :/ So I understand how you feel!

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  17. Sorry, Mimi, I left this comment yesterday but it’s either gone to spam or just not ‘stuck’, which seems to be happening too regularly, some kind of WP glitch maybe. I saved it just in case :

    Nooooo, that’s the last thing you need to dampen what was a good day! I’m so sorry you got ticketed. I wouldn’t have a clue with the 4ft thing, I’d guess it and be awfully wrong. There should DEFINITELY be a line, not just assuming people know what such a measurement looks like. Maybe you could write to the Beach Patrol gang, make the suggestion.

    Then tell them you never learned the imperial system of feet at school, only the metric system with meters. Or tell them you literally measured with your feet, and obviously your feet weren’t the same size as their when they measured!!

    Caz xx

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    • Your reply made me laugh. Thank you for giving me the giggles. I can imagine telling the beach patrol that I literally measured with my feet and my feet aren’t the same size as theirs. haha! 🙂

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  18. Melissa, as you told your story, I knew something was up but wasn’t sure what. When you said you saw the little orange ticket on your car window, I grit my teeth. That wasn’t fair! You and Alan were trying so hard to follow the beach rules. But I loved your Godly response of patiently accepting what happened and turned it over to the Lord. Love you blog. You’ve got a great following as well.

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  20. Oh my goodness, this made me laugh. I feel like I accidentally break the rules all the time! Thanks for letting me know I’m not alone:). I love this line: Sand, sunshine, sounds of waves jumping to reach the shore… I love how it captures the heart of a creative God who made wonders to delight us.

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  23. Mimi, what a surprising end to the start of a happy day. Those rules sound awfully strict to me! Especially when you had every intention of obeying them. But I hope you enjoyed your walk…I wish I lived by a beach. What fun! Wishing you lots of blessings and giggles!

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    • Karen, we did enjoy the walk. We have decided to find another parking area next time. Don’t want to take any chances of breaking the rules. Have a wonderful, blessed, giggle filled day! 🙂

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  31. Hi Melissa
    It is really a great joy to be here today via one of the comments you made on Mellisa Handerson’s post.
    What a lovely image connected to a lot of lovely and inspiring thoughts.
    Keep sharing.
    Best Regards
    ~ Philip Ariel

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