Julia Goes Down to the Sea!

In comparison with the handful of regrets Julia Whitcock had accumulated over the 44 years and 2 days which had passed since she was born, the current day's choices which had combined to throw her off schedule were no big deal, but in the moment she was pretty annoyed at what they had ended up costing her.

Allowing herself to sleep in at her hotel had set her back a couple of hours. The extraordinarily slow service at the diner where she stopped for lunch wasn't something she could have predicted, nor was the 20 mile detour because of an accident blocking a tunnel on her route, but the hour they cost her vexed her just as much as if they were her fault.

She still had one option available to make up lost time as she drove along the often spectacular US101 Pacific Coast highway along a portion of the Oregon coast from Eugene north to Astoria. She decided not to skip a tour of an unbelievably vast hangar she'd read about in Tillamook, somehow still surviving 80 years after being built to house a fleet of blimps in the early days of WWII.

Reasoning that before she ever got back this way the gigantic wood framed structure could meet the same fiery fate as its twin on the same site had, she regretfully decided to prioritize the tour over her other goal for the day -- watching the sun setting while she bobbed in the Pacific ocean.

The main purpose of her trip had been accomplished before she woke up that morning; Julia's daughter Cara had settled into her dorm room two days earlier, and they had explored the campus and town together the next day. When she'd dropped off her two cats with him, Julia had told George, her soon-to-be ex-husband, that as long as she was going across the country it made sense to spend an extra day or two sightseeing after helping Cara get herself set up in what was likely to be her home most of the next four years.

Deep down Julia realized she'd been postponing the inevitable moment when she would leave Cara to begin this new chapter of her life. As proud as she was that her baby seemed ready to take on the world, Julia was already dreading seeing Cara's empty bedroom when she made it home!

Arriving a frustrating 20 minutes after sunset at the state park where she'd reserved a yurt for the night, Julia checked in. She took a copy of a map the park Ranger handed her with her yurt's location circled. Thinking she'd need to venture out to find somewhere to have dinner, Julia asked her, "Are there any restrictions on the park's hours?"

Thinking her request was more general, the Ranger replied, "There's nobody here to check people in after 10 PM, but you're all set that way already. You can come and go as you like, but 11PM to 7AM are designated quiet hours. The bathhouses are open 24/7, with towels and washcloths already in your yurt. There's no lifeguards on duty until 8 AM, but all the normal posted rules apply at the beach."

Julia thanked the park Ranger and asked if there were any good places nearby to get dinner. After a brief stop to drop her bags off at her yurt she drove a few miles north, finding a barbecue joint and a convenience store right where the Ranger had described. Grudgingly accepting that her imagined goal of floating in the Pacific as the sun set was simply not going to happen, she enjoyed a fine dinner of ribs, sweet potato fries and coleslaw.

She began to relax and looked forward to a nice quiet night without the temptation to zone out to a hotel television. Tipping well in recognition of the good service, better food and the fact that she had been the last customer there most of her visit, she moved on from dinner to the convenience store next door to pick up a few snacks and a pack of single serve bottles of red wine.

Returning to her yurt just after 10PM, Julia was greeted by a couple hanging out at a picnic table outside their yurt, just beyond hers. The man offered her a beer, but she turned his offer down, holding up her carton full of wine and saying, "I came prepared!"

The couple, Jesse and Barb, and Julia introduced themselves to each other, and were surprised to find out that they all lived in suburbs relatively close to Atlanta. After a long day without any real conversation, Julia enjoyed sipping her wine and chatting with Jesse and Barb, but excused herself a bit more than 40 minutes after arriving, saying she was desperate to have a shower after a long day on the road. They exchanged contact information and said goodnight.

Back in her yurt, Julia set out her extra long t-shirt, her usual choice for pajamas when traveling, and her clothes for the following day. She checked in for her flights home with her phone. Having nothing left to do to prepare for the morning, she cracked open a second tiny bottle before realizing she didn't have even a cheapie hotel room cup like the one Jesse had handed her to drink her wine. She sipped the surprisingly good Merlot and laughed as she thought, "drinking alone, straight from the bottle! Probably not something I should make a habit of!"

As she nursed her drink she made a couple of quick phone calls, one to Cara and one to George, just checking in so they knew she'd made it to her planned destination and expected to be home late the next day. When he didn't pick up Julia recorded a message for George, but erased it; she'd updated him on Cara's move-in, but with their divorce only days from being finalized she figured the details of her day were not really his business.

Scrolling through assorted news apps, the day's accumulated Facebook posts and her email helped her pass the time, but she'd had enough of what her phone had to offer by 11 PM. She decided to beat the morning rush at the bathhouse by having a shower at an hour when most of the her fellow campers were in for the night, judging by the lack of lights on at most of her neighbors yurts. She took her toiletry kit, a bathmat, a bath towel and a washcloth from the generous supply neatly stacked on a shelving unit. "This yurt is billed as sleeping four, and seems to be supplied for at least that many," she thought.

Settling in for a relaxing shower, Julia found that the hot water supply was more than adequate. With nobody else waiting for a turn at a stall, she took her time, hoping to loosen up her back, arm and shoulder muscles after a long day of driving the twisty coast highway. The shower was as enjoyable as she had hoped, but the pre and post-shower experience was less comfortable; the only private space to change and dry off was inside the shower stall, and the only place to keep her towel dry was on a bench opposite the stall along the outside wall of the building. Hooks on the wall above the bench gave her a dry place to hang her clothes.

Since all four of the stalls in the ladies shower room had a constant leak from the shower head, ranging from a slow drip to a constant drizzle, Julia resigned herself to getting undressed and dressed out in the walkway running the length of the building. She was a bit unnerved by the idea of being naked right where someone coming in the entrance would be able to see her, even just for as long as it took her to hang up her clothes. Eventually the complete lack of any other women coming to shower while she was there calmed her nerves, and the distinctly not low-flow shower and generous hot water eased her aches.

Wishing she'd brought a second towel to dry her hair, Julia hedged her bets, standing half in and half out of the stall as she dried her hair, then stepped all the way out to dry the rest of herself. Remembering that she was overdue to shave her legs, she wrapped the towel around her body, fished her razor and a small bottle of lotion out of the toiletry bag and sat down on the bench to begin shaving. The towel was both inconvenient, requiring constant readjustment to give her razor room, and less than effective, popping loose and falling half off as she stretched to reach all the spots she needed to. "Oh, what the hell," she grumbled, "No one has come in the whole time I've been here, I'm likely the only woman in the park still awake!" She let the towel open, flipping both sides away to provide access.

After a thorough shaving of her legs and application of lotion, Julia stood up to get dressed, letting the towel drop away completely, landing on the bench. She put the razor and lotion away, then reached for for her t-shirt. She'd already decided against putting her bra and panties back on, and now had second thoughts about putting any dirty clothes on right after showering. Considering how unlikely running into anyone was, she decided to make do during the short walk back to her yurt wearing just her towel and sandals.

Thinking about the many ways wearing just a damp towel could go wrong, Julia didn't want to have to do any reaching for dropped items during her walk back to her yurt. She set her toiletry bag, socks, panties, bra, shorts and barbecue sauce-stained t-shirt neatly in the middle of the bathmat and rolled them up tightly.

The bathhouse had no door to hear creaking, since the entrance had walls arranged to block the view from outside, so Julia wouldn't have heard the two new customers arrive; her random choice of location to stand when rolling up her possessions kept her from seeing them either. The first clue she was no longer alone was hearing one of the young men shouting, "Holy shit!"

Without thinking she spun around to see who she was sharing the room with, inadvertently offering the two young men, each of whom was wearing only a towel, a brief look at the rest of her body before grabbing her own towel and more or less covering herself. "What the fuck! What are you doing in here?" she demanded. For one scary moment she was afraid SHE was the reason they were there. After a few more moments the confused looks on their faces as they looked back and forth between the attractive naked woman in front of them and each other told her they were every bit as surprised as she was!

Um, this is the Men's shower room," the taller of the two finally answered, then asked, "is there something wrong with the Women's showers?" His expression shifted from shock to a broad smile as he spoke.

"Oh..., I, no, I guess I just wasn't paying attention, sorry!" She hastily rearranged her towel to wrap around her, covering both boobs for the first time in this encounter! Careful to hold the towel closed, Julia did a sort of curtsy to pick up the rolled up bathmat and hurried past the two startled guys. She guessed they were her daughter's age give or take, though she thought her ability to assess their ages might have been a bit off; it had been a very long time since she'd been that close to a male of that age wearing so little! "Sorry," she repeated over her shoulder as she walked away.

"No problem!" the shorter of the two answered, "really!"

Julia hustled back to her yurt, checking over her shoulder to be sure she wasn't being followed. One last check at the door confirmed that not only was she not being followed, there was no clear view between the bathhouse and her yurt. She dropped her improvised bathmat parcel just inside the door and flopped onto one of the beds, noticing for the first time how her heartbeat was racing. "That's to be expected," she thought, realizing that until just a few minutes ago, other than assorted medical professionals, George was the only man who'd seen her naked in more than twenty-two years! After a few minutes she calmed down and giggled as she wondered if she should tell him that streak was over!

Julia couldn't help being slightly pleased about her bathhouse fiasco; while she was sure she never would have intentionally put herself in that kind of situation, as she replayed her memory of the brief encounter, she found herself enjoying the reactions of the two guys. Nothing more than them getting an accidental glimpse of her body had really happened, and the odds of either of them ever seeing her again had to be impossibly high. "No harm done, really," she thought, "and considering I'm likely older than their combined ages it's kind of flattering to think they seemed to like what they saw!"

Julia was particularly satisfied with the reaction of her unexpected and unintentional voyeurs' to her unplanned display of exposed skin because a lot of effort and money had been expended to make her appearance what it was. When she had turned 40 she didn't like the way her appearance and her fitness were headed. She had never been obese, but the pound or two gained each year suddenly seemed noticeable. When Cara joined her high school's JV soccer team Julia hated that she couldn't keep up with Cara on her nightly training runs, even when Cara held back. Having been on her college's cross-country team, this was a wake up call. As she celebrated her birthday she thought, "If I've let myself go this much already, I don't even want to think what I'll be like in another ten or twenty years!"

Julia had stuck with her goal of getting back to a weight and fitness level comparable to what she was like before she'd been pregnant with Cara; by her 42nd birthday her frequent visits to a gym and miles of running combined to help her surpass her original goals, reaching a weight she hadn't been at since her senior year in college, and had even run a few 5k races!

The only thing about her transformation which bothered her was a loss of at least a full bra cup size. George insisted she was sexier than she'd been since they first met, but Julia missed some of her departed curves. She asked George for a single gift for her 43rd birthday, a boob job to get her back to her pre-weight-loss 38C bra size! He swore that she was perfect as she was, but something in his reassurances sounded false to her. She convinced him that this was serious about; he gave in when he saw how much she wanted to do it.

Though nothing even close to the exposure she'd had that night had ever occurred when she was home, Julia had been aware of some of Cara's male classmates being distracted from their homework if she passed through the kitchen dressed in her usual gym attire when they were studying there. Cara was more amused than angered by the boys in her circle trying, and often failing, to be subtle about ogling her Mom, but after she mentioned a couple of her girlfriends making snide comments about Julia being a MILF, Julia began changing at the gym into something less revealing than the jog bra and bike shorts she had typically been wearing on her drive home!

Switching from the towel to her long t-shirt sleep attire, Julia turned out the lights and went to bed, but was still tossing and turning an hour later. She noticed the nearly full moon had sunk low enough in the western sky to be seen in a screened window from her spot in bed. After a few more minutes spent getting ever more annoyed by her mind refusing to shut down and let her get to sleep, a new idea popped into her thoughts.

While she had missed seeing the sun setting in the Pacific, she could, with a short walk, go sit at the beach and possibly even float in the ocean while watching the moon set beyond the western horizon! A short, mostly flat walk and a bit of time sitting on what was likely to be a deserted beach, listening to the waves, seemed like a good way to wind down enough to finally be in a good state for sleeping.

She turned on the lights and rooted around in her luggage, searching in vain for her swimsuit. Not finding it did nothing to improve Julia's mood; after checking every compartment at least twice she assumed it had been left behind in her haste to get out of her hotel room earlier in the day. "Oh, well, this is good enough to go moon gazing in," she said as she rounded out her ensemble by adding a pair of running shorts to her shirt. She took the key to the yurt from the shorts she'd been wearing and slipped the coiled elastic loop over her right hand.

Unsure of how long the moon might take to set, she rolled up another small bottle of wine in a towel along with a small cheese and cracker snack she'd bought at the convenience store. "There," she said to herself, "ready to see the Pacific ocean up close, maybe even float or wade in a little!"

As she closed the door she wondered if the moonlight would be bright enough to safely make it down to the beach, so she backtracked briefly to get a small flashlight. She set out for the beach, happy to see that of the dozen yurts, hers was one of only three still with lights on. Once she was clear of the campsites she found a trail leading to the beach at a gap in a solid wall of trees.

Julia used her flashlight to read a sign posted at the beginning of the trail, reading the rules for beach-goers to herself, "Let's see, 'No bonfires', well, I wasn't planning on having one anyway...'No camping', not a problem...'No fireworks', didn't bring any...'No glass bottles', luckily enough mine is plastic...'No smoking', never did, so no problem...Looks like I'm good to go!" She was excited to hear the sound of the waves getting louder as she began descending along the walkway, but walked slowly. She was glad she'd remembered to bring the flashlight; the rough stone path was fairly irregular and there were a few places where the path included steps.

After walking roughly 60 yards, Julia reached a final set of steps where the dense trees at both sides of the path ended; she stood there a minute, taking in the view. She saw a broad sand beach extending as far as she could see to both left and right, a far larger darkness beyond, with a bright streak of light reflected on the surface of the water aligned with the moon above. The moon seemed brighter than she'd ever seen it! She followed the beam of her flashlight down the steps, then, just in case someone else were to come down the steps she turned right and walked along the rock wall at the back of the sandy beach, making sure she'd be able to find her way back by counting exactly one hundred steps from the base of the stair before setting her towel out.

Julia couldn't help thinking how beautiful the place she was must be at sunset, but she had no complaints; the beach and ocean were amazing, and far as she could see or hear she had it all to herself! She kicked off her sandals and walked down to the waterline, then continued, wading in just up to her knees. She stood there for a few minutes, surprised that the water was as warm as it was. She strolled back to her base camp and sat down on the towel. Seeing that it would be a while be a while before the moon finally dipped out of sight, she twisted the cap off her bottle of wine and took a sip, then popped open the small snack tray and began nibbling on cheese and crackers.

After she finished off the last of her wine and snacks, Julia went back for another wade. She couldn't be certain, but she thought the tide seemed to be heading out. The beach's slope was very shallow, both above and below the waterline. She walked back to her towel, scanning up and down the beach for any sign of life, and was pleased to find none. She was amazed that nobody else was around to enjoy the peaceful scene, thinking, "I guess state park campers must mostly be morning people. Nice for me!"

Julia was pretty pleased with herself for having improvised a substitute for her original plan of floating peacefully in the Pacific as she enjoyed the sunset; as quiet and private as it had turned out to be, the substitute was in some ways better than her original plan! "And since I left my swimsuit behind at the hotel, I'd have had to skip actual swimming if I'd been here for the sunset anyway!" She thought about the conditions she found herself in compared with what the beach might have been like before sunset; it occurred to her that her improvised late-night visit to the beach might actually let get closer to her original wish!

Julia shivered, shocked that she was actually viewing undressing and floating in the moonlit ocean in the nude as a viable option, but her careful study of the beach in all directions was the behavior of someone who wanted to know for sure whether or not anyone else was nearby. Noticing that the moon was not too far from the horizon, she thought, "it can't be long before the moon is set, so I wouldn't need to be naked very long, and it really looks and sounds like I'm alone here," she noticed for the first time that she was fiddling with the hem of her shirt, flipping it up to her waist.