O is for the Ocean

***I’m going to try to post something every day in the month of November. I definitely may not- it’s just a goal and I’m not going to be upset about missing it! Hopefully in my spare time, I can come up with a post per day. My prompts are going to be the letters of the alphabet. I will write about something that starts with the day’s letter- think Sesame Street meets the blogsphere. Of course there are more days in the month of November than there are letters in the alphabet. I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it!***

I didn't see the ocean (an ocean?) until I was out of college! Vacations to far away places were not in the family budget. Actually, vacations just about anywhere were not in the budget. The furthest family vacation we took was to the UP in Michigan which was about an eight hour drive. When we went to the UP, we stayed with relatives who lived there to save money.

When I was in college, one year my spring break and my sister's lined up so we decided to go on a road trip. Our destination was Charleston, South Carolina. One of my sister's good friends was graduated from college and living in Charleston so we headed there. It was a memorable trip... but I don't recall that we ever made it to the ocean. When our spring break was approaching, a really odd thing happened, a severe winter storm was predicted for the south. Not just a little bit of snow either. Lots of predicted snow that late in the season was extremely odd and Katy and I hoped and prayed that the forecast was wrong. (This was pre- weather forecast/ radar at our fingertips. There seemed to be more of a chance that a weather prediction would be wrong.)  But it was not. We drove into one of the worst storms I've ever driven in as we headed south. One town in Tennessee received a total of fifty six inches of snow. Fifty inches fell in North Carolina. The storm would end up being called the Storm of the Century. It impacted much of the east coast and the south. It impacted Katy and me when we encountered the storm while driving. The interstate we were on shut down. We were on the highway stuck, without moving for hours (I don't know how long but I knew that somehow we both fell asleep in the car). We eventually turned around and got the last room in a hotel one evening and one evening we slept in a high school gymnasium that had been turned into a shelter for stuck travelers. We did eventually make it to Charleston but our time was cut super short due to the days that it took us to drive to South Carolina. It was also very windy when we were in South Carolina. I don't think we even viewed the ocean even though that was on our (pre storm of the century!) agenda. 

I got to see the ocean for the first time when we Donnie and I and his parents drove to Virginia to see some of Donnie's family. Donnie's Uncle Doug used to live in Virginia Beach, Virginia and we spent one night with Doug and his wife. We went to the beach to see it but it was way too cold to swim in it. 

The next opportunity that I had to see the ocean was when I went to California for work. It was a work conference. I was with some good work friends and I was seven months pregnant with Jacob! Not an ideal time to travel but it worked out pretty well! The conference was in San Jose but we were able to extend our stay by a day. We rented a car and drove to some sites including briefly seeing the Pacific Ocean. That trip was the one and only time that I have seen the Pacific Ocean.

Several years passed- the long work years/ child having years!! By the time Alyssa was born, our family had not traveled further than to one state away. Donnie was working hard as an associate at his firm, the kids were tiny and not ideal travelers. We finally took our first family vacation when Alyssa was two years old. Abby would have been five and Jacob seven. We wanted the kids to see the ocean. We wanted to see the ocean and ideally be able to get in it and swim in it.  We chose Florida, specifically Fort Myers because we wanted to ensure warm weather for the spring break trip.

Since that Florida vacation, beach vacations have always been our favorite kinds of vacation. The Happiest Place on Earth? It's not found (for us) in a place where you have to wait an hour for a ride, plan meticulously when you will get to what attraction to when to try to make sure you only wait an hour, etc. No thank you- not for us! 

Since that Florida vacation, we have been to Florida numerous times and to beach destinations in the Caribbean. Last summer, we got to see the Atlantic from much further north- Maine. We loved the beauty of the its rocky shoreline even though it wasn't super swimming friendly. 

In Ohio, the closest ocean to us is the Atlantic. The closest ocean beaches to us are at least a nine hour drive away: Virginia Beach, Myrtle Beach, SC, and several beach towns in Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland are all between a nine and ten hour drive from us. Florida beaches are a much further drive for us- fortunately, flight prices to many Florida beach towns generally are not too high.  Speaking of Florida, Donnie and I would love to have a second house or condo in a beach town in Florida (or maybe SC). We don't know when or exactly where this would happen but it's fun to think and dream about!