The Best Vacation

I try to avoid contentious topics on this blog but I’ll just put this one out there. The best vacations are on the beach! My family just wrapped up our summer vacation at a beach destination. While the weather wasn’t the best, we still had a great time. This week’s featured pic is one of the beautiful sunrises. There is just something about the beach that makes it the best vacation option for our family.

Perhaps it is because we reside so far from the ocean. I am sure if we lived closer to the coast, the beach would lose some of its charm. Growing up, I lived in a land locked state and the summer beach vacation was the highlight of the year. Loading up the station wagon and heading to the beach was only matched by the excitement experienced on Christmas morning!

In fact, when I was I kid, I used to get so excited about going to the beach with my family I’d sometimes get physically ill! Sometimes we would camp, sometimes we’d stay in hotels and sometimes it would rain nearly the whole time, but we still had a blast.

As I grew older and started a family of my own, my wife and I initially felt our children should have a more enlightened and productive summer vacation. We tried taking our kids to vacation spots that had more historical and cultural value.

We quickly learned two active and growing boys lose interest in museums fast! Although we still visit museums, historical sites and places with a little more culture as well as take the occasional camping trip, the beach remains our default preferred vacation spot.

So what does a beach vacation entail for our family? Of course there is the obvious, at least a few days of just soaking in the sun and playing in the surf. Shutting down for a moment is something I think we all need. Then there is usually a visit to the typical beach town attractions- mini-golf, fishing piers, aquariums, perhaps an amusement park and of course shopping.

But for our family, seafood is always a highlight! Fortunately we all enjoy seafood and consuming it by the sea seems to help make the meal all the more enjoyable. Admittedly, most beachside restaurants are overpriced, but well worth the premium for the location in our opinion.

My wife and I always get a kick out of the look we get when we order four dozen raw oysters. It’s the only time we eat them! This week I will begin my efforts to shed the 5lbs vacation weight I put on last week!

Beyond the food, entertainment and surf, this year’s vacation was extra special for many reasons. First and foremost, it was the first time our family traveled anywhere overnight together in over a year and a half. COVID impacted us all in many different ways. Our family has been very fortunate so far during the pandemic. That being said, we were getting a little stir crazy and needed to get away together. We are all vaccinated and felt the time was right to venture away from home.

We were not alone. The beach spot we visited was fairly crowded. It was great to see people out and about, seemingly almost back to normal.  There were still a few COVID precautions in place but for the most part, everyone carried on as they did pre-COVID to include no masks. I really don’t know what the future holds for this pandemic, but seeing people out spoke volumes to me about American resiliency. We will see how summer vacations impact COVID rates. I truly hope this is the beginning of the end and we can start putting the pandemic behind us.

This year’s beach vacation was extra special because it also contained a “working” element. We stopped by a college town on our way to the beach and accompanied our rising high school senior on tours of a couple of universities.

This was certainly bittersweet. I would be extremely proud if our son got accepted to either of the two colleges we visited. But I also know this means family beach vacations could be transforming within the next few years. This time around, we just tried to cherish every moment together with the understanding a lot of changes are coming.

And I think that is truly what makes a beach vacation so special. The beach provides an opportunity for families to come together, usually in tighter quarters and just spend some quality time. Can you do the same in the mountains, by a lake or river? Certainly. But there is something about the quality time spent building a sandcastle, fishing or playing 18 holes of mini-golf that you just can’t get everywhere.

As I reflect back, that’s really what I loved the most about the beach when I was a kid. It wasn’t the ocean’s beauty or the excitement of riding waves on a boogie board. It was a week where my hard working parents could stop and just focus on the family for a little while. I feel very blessed that growing up my family was able to save for a beach vacation just about every year and that my own family can do the same today.

Very thankful we were able to take a vacation this summer and for us, the beach was the obvious destination. We are already planning next year’s trip! Next week I’ll examine travel a little more. If beaches are the best for family bonding, then international travel is the most educational!

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