The Sandhill

After writing about all those poor Southern California kids who have no snow and have to sled on sand, it occurred to me that growing up I was one of those deprived children myself.

Although I don't remember the parking lot berms when I was young.  Instead, we had the sandhill.

The sandhill (that's what we always called it) was a on the Pacific Coast Highway, north of Malibu, but before you got to Leo Carillo, Carpinteria, Oxnard or Santa Barbara, all places we occasionally went.  And anytime we went that far north, we begged our mother to stop.

She would only stop when we were going north and had extra time.  We had to be going north because the sandhill was on the right of the highway, and she never allowed us to cross the highway to get there.  We had to have extra time, because we were not fast climbers.

In my memory, the sandhill was huge.  We would walk up to the top, which seemed to take forever.  If we had been planning ahead, we had cardboard to slide down on.  Otherwise, once we got to the top, we would turn around and run downhill at a crazy speed, letting the momentum take over.  What a rush!

On one of my recent trips to Southern California, I drove north on the Pacific Coast Highway and I stopped at the sandhill to take a break from driving and to stretch my legs.  (Full disclosure:  Mom, I crossed the highway to look at the ocean.  But I looked both ways!)

Amazingly enough, in this digital entertainment age, there were two young teenagers climbing the sandhill with a boogie board in hand, ready to slide down.  I guess some things are just pure fun!