Laugh it up!: Beachy Keen

Beach walkway on the Isle of Palms.

I LOVE the beach!! I never understood why people went on summer vacations to South Carolina, but I do now. I had this idea that the Atlantic Ocean was glacial no matter where you went (just because it was on Cape Cod and in Southern England), however, swimming in the Atlantic in the South is like swimming in a giant bathtub. In fact, at Hilton Head I felt like the water was so hot it could have bee a hot tub! But we still loved it.

East Coast/Southern beaches are so different from the Hawaiian beaches I grew up on, but they have some unique characteristics that I really like. At all the beaches we went to the water was very calm and shallow. Most people had big, colorful umbrellas and beach chairs and a lot of them brought their chairs right down into the water and let the waves come up underneath them while they read or chatted. It seemed very relaxing.

The beaches also usually have long, beautiful wooden walkways down to the beach. Usually all the houses or buildings are set quite a ways back from the beach, which I think may have something to do with keeping them a little more protected during hurricane season. East Coast beaches also have this tall beach grass growing everywhere and I thought it looked so gorgeous against the sand and walkways.

The beaches also seemed to have seashells, of every shape and size, everywhere. Most of them weren't intact, but they were still pretty to look at. The sand was one thing Tyler and I didn't love. It was very, very fine which made it really hard to dust off your feet.

We didn't really spend anytime on a beach in Georgia, though we did rent wave runners out on Tybee Island for a little bit. The water was still so warm so it was really fun to zip around the bay on those things. I'm sure we killed a few fish during our ride though, because they kept jumping all over the place. We also had to dodge the birds dive-bombing all around us. Good times :)