As we were going to St. Ives...

We woke to rain this morning, and since we really hadn't made any specific plans for the day, a visit the Tate St. Ives art gallery seemed like a good indoor activity.  But just as we were about to travel to St. Ives...

Sheryle's friend Jan's childhood friend Gill (pronounced "Jill") and her husband Mike tapped on the door - what a delightful surprise!  Jan had said that they'd be vacationing in Cornwall this week, and we wanted to visit them but had no way to contact them.  Seems in the meantime Jan let them know where we were, and they drove over to Portreath from Padstow on the chance they might find us.  We had a wonderful visit - and we're going to go to Padstow on Thursday to visit them.

We were so glad that we hadn't left earlier and missed them - especially since, when we did drive over to St. Ives later this afternoon, we found the Tate galleries closed for the week while they set up a new exhibit.  (Vicki read in the paper that the Queen's scheduled to visit on Friday - guess they want to spruce the place up for her.)

St. Ives wasn't a total bust, though.  It was raining pretty hard when we arrived, but after we ducked into a cafe for lunch, the rain subsided, and the sun even peaked through for a while.  St. Ives is a really beautiful town - full of artists.

Obviously, the tide was out in the boat harbor.

There are actually three beach coves along the waterfront - a family (all clad in "wellies" - rubber boots to us) was wading in the surf as the gull watched at this one.

We asked a passer-by to take our wind-swept portrait du jour -

We almost made it back to the car - but not quite - before the rain started again, in earnest this time.  It really poured.  And then the wind picked up.  The road was full of leaves and branches blown out of the trees, and at one point we came around a corner to find a large branch hanging halfway across the road.  We were glad it didn't break off while we were driving around it.

It was quite a storm, with the wind howling, the boats in the harbor outside our window bouncing around like toys and waves crashing into the rocks - the kind of day that keeps the Coast Guard busy.

As I look out now, the wind has subsided and the moon's visible in the clearing sky.  That bodes well for tomorrow.