My husband and I are just back from our yearly beach trip with all of the family. The past two years we went to Ocacroke, an island off the coast of North Carolina, just below the Outer Banks. My husband and I both love it there!... beautiful wide open beaches, a walkable small town feel with quaint shops and a neighborhood grocery store that stocks just about everything, lots of local history (Blackbeard the pirate slept here!), a long ferry ride there to help you decompress, plenty of golfcarts and bikes and hardly any cars... what's not to like?!!
But last year, we had almost a whole week of rain... and our "Big Kids" (aka our grown children!) were bored and needed something more exciting to do.
So this year, we compromised and went to a beach we'd never visited before... Folly Beach in South Carolina... just a 20 minute ride to Charleston.
Honestly, as I packed for the trip, I was wishing we were going back to Ocacroke. But once we got there, Folly Beach kinda grew on me! We rented a gorgeous house with room for all of us to spread out. It was within a short walk to the beach, which was wide and sometimes had little pools at low tide where our granddaughter could splash around and make sand castles... Perfect! On our first night there it rained, and we were serenaded by what sounded like a million frogs!... I guess there's a first time for everything!
My husband is an early riser... and so is our 4 year old granddaughter... so they had quite a few breakfast dates at the Lost Dog Cafe. I even got to go along one morning. Lots of local color and "pampakes" for our granddaughter that were shaped like a bunny! Breakfast "dates" with Opa have become a vacation tradition that my husband really looks forward to!
We did have a few rainy and windy days that made beach-going less than ideal... so on those days we headed to Charleston, where we went to the South Carolina Aquarium (they rehabilitate injured sea turtles), ate a yummy lunch out, did a little shopping, and took a fun boat ride over to check out Fort Sumter.
Folly Beach has a brand new pier, where we enjoyed a great family dinner at Koko's On The Pier, a tiki bar with lots of seating under colorful umbrellas. We had fun watching all the fishermen and surfers on our after dinner pier walk, and visited a cute gift shop where I found a paper mache seagull to take home with me!
I got a little time to sketch while we were there, so I had fun drawing the Folly Beach doodles above in my sketchbook... Kinda a fun way to remember this year's family beach vacation!
Most of all, I just enjoyed being with our family!... hanging out on the screened porch in the morning drinking coffee, sitting under the beach umbrella watching everyone play and build sandcastles, walking on the beach together looking for seashells and watching the pelicans, watching funny movies together in the evening... all the simple things that help to bring us closer together. I'm very very grateful for this time of family togetherness!... and I'm already looking forward to next year!
