The beach’s in Clearwater, Florida opened last weekend and we like many of us had an urgent innate need to step out on the sand and dip our toes in the water. The sand was warm and as soft as we remembered. The breeze was pleasant.  The water was quite cold. We didn’t care. We do know that the beach was a little different. The area we go to is dotted with chairs and umbrellas that are rented and we could tell the density of those umbrellas was a little less.  We did also find fewer people on the beach. Yet, as the day went by the beach began to fill up without everyone obeying the social distancing rules. I have to say I love the social distancing rules probably because I grew up on going to a beach where we often had more than a hundred yards between people at the beach. We know that there are plans in place to mitigate the crowding at the beach but we aren’t exactly sure other than closing parking lots and closing the beach as a whole they can do to limit the problems of spreading the contagion. We’ve adopted a policy of go early and leave before the beach fills up. We are looking forward to making many more trips to the beach in the near future. We just hope that we can keep going and things don’t go bad and they decide to close the beaches altogether.