Ocean Shores - April 2009

Album | Slideshow

We had to wait until the house was on the market to take our first road trip in "Ruby Tuesday", the VW Vanagon Westphalia camper van we bought a couple of months ago. That finally happened last weekend and we headed out of town for Ocean Shores.

Ocean Shores is where my family went for getaways when I was a kid and I have lots of fond memories of it. I've gone back there all my life every couple of years. It's a typical ocean beach tourist town: a little bit tacky. But it has a miles-long wide sand beach.

We didn't finish up the house until afternoon so we left home about 3:00. We made a stop on the way to get Charlotte a sleeping bag and arrived at the beach about 7:00. We grabbed dinner to go and ate in the van on the beach watching the sunset. It was such a switch from the house prep death march to having fun with the family that I was pretty giddy. Plus it was the first sunny weekend in ages after an unusually cool and moist winter and early spring.


Ocean Shores Video

After sunset we drove to nearby Ocean City State Park and found a spot to sleep. The girls had been asking all day when we were going to put up the pop top, so they were excited. We had a great time playing and getting set up for sleeping and reading stories. I don't think we settled down to sleep until 10:00. Audrey started out in the upper bed with me but after 45 minutes of restlessness she decided she wanted to sleep on the floor.

We all slept pretty well in the van. I went to the bathroom about 4am and was surprised that opening and closing the sliding door didn't wake up the girls. When I woke up to daylight I figured it was 6:30. But when I looked at the clock it was 8:15 and everyone else was still sleeping. Amazing! But by 8:30 we were all awake and laughing.

We went back into town for breakfast and then back to the beach. It was relatively warm (50's) but with a steady strong breeze so coats were required. After playing in the dunes and watching other people fly kites I decided we needed a kite or two as well. The kite store was only a short distance away so I went and bought a Spiderman kite for Audrey and a ladybug kite for Charlotte.

When I unwound the kite strings and handed the spool to each girl and launched the kites they were thrilled. They happily flew their kites for a long time. The wind was perfect for it. As the day wore on it got warm enough, for Audrey at least, to be comfortable in just a t-shirt.

We hung out at the beach until mid-afternoon and then left for home. I sat in the back with the girls most of the way home and we had a good time together.

It was a very successful first road trip in the "new" van. We look forward to many, many more of them. We'd be gone somewhere this weekend but I checked the weather reports yesterday and it's raining all weekend everywhere within driving distance.