I Don’t Do Beach Vacations

A friend of mine every year goes to Jamaica for a week. She and her husband spend the week sitting on the beach. They read, they talk, they relax. And every year she talks about how much she can’t wait to go back.

I’m happy for her that she’s found something that relaxes her (and that she can afford to do it every year) because she deserves it. However, I can’t help but listen to her describe her vacations with a feeling of dismay. Because what she describes sounds like absolute hell to me.

I don’t take beach vacations. I don’t particularly like walking in sand and the sun and I are not particularly compatible. Beside all of that, I live in the midwest. The nearest “beach” is on Lake Michigan several hours away and it isn’t quite the same as lounging on a sandy beach on the Gulf of Mexico. So, to get to any proper beach is a huge affair that requires many hours of driving or a plane flight. And once you get there, the plan is to do nothing. You sit on a beach, covered by an umbrella presumably, and read while the ocean exists in front of you. Here’s the thing, I can do that at home for free. On the internet somewhere there is surely a video feed of a bit of sea or ocean. I can put on my bathing suit, put my feet up in a chair, and put that video feed on in the background at home for no money.

When I go on vacation, I want to do things. I want to see things I can’t experience in my living room. I want to eat food I can’t normally get or go to a museum and learn something. Some of this may be because that is how my dad vacations. He doesn’t believe in savoring the moments while on vacation. When we went to Disney World, we were the first ones in the park every morning and we raced between the top 5 popular rides so that we could ride them all before the lines got too long. When we took a trip to the East Coast, we got up before dawn to pack sandwiches for in the car and hit three states before suppertime.

And to me, that is a vacation. I tried to sit on a beach once. I lasted three hours. Then I was bored, hungry, and sunburnt. Plus, I had sand in nooks and crannies I didn’t even know I had. It was awful. And I have never had any urge to repeat the experiment.

So, should we ever meet and become friends, if you want to go on vacation with me, know that we won’t be sitting around staring at the ocean.