6:30 Monday morning, 20 August

Aha! Good morning my sleeping neighbors. You’re missing out on a spectacular sunrise. Beau and I steal out of the enclosure for our early walk. (Actually, I steal and he runs around sniffing peoples’ trash).
The sky is, for once, a mellow turquoise and the clouds hovering over the rising sun are in shades of peach and apricot on their soft underbellies, like children around a campfire.
Back at camp, the little donkey, a kid attraction, brays obnoxiously in his stall right behind the big late-night party tent. Hee-haw… Ha hah!
We hop in the Kangoo and go to the beach. Now it’s gray and the clouds are dark and scolding, but the wide crescent beach at Carnac looks inviting. There are only a couple of dog walkers on the sand and occasional joggers on the perimeter walkway.
Carnac’s shoreline winds around a point to the little town of Trinité Sur Mer, which has smaller beaches and a bigger port. Neither one of these little towns are ‘beachy’ in that no souvenir stalls line the roads between town and beach—only residences and hotels, with cafés and restaurants. The ‘commerces de la plage’ are located on side streets, but still no surf shops, cartoon beach towels or French fry stands.
To me, that seems fitting, knowing that in the countryside just beyond are thousands of those ancient rocks, placed upright by Druids (or giants, some say), standing solemn and dignified as one does when in possession of unknowable secrets.
To keep my vision of them in my imagination, I avoid the tourist office, information centers and the museum, where vacationers are lined up to ‘see’ them.