The time has finally come for my first visit to the beach since last summer. This time it is a family vacation just like I had many times throughout my childhood. Just my mom, dad, brother, and a couple of Pomeranians.
We decided upon a beach that none of us had ever been to before. The place is called Seaside Heights, New Jersey. If you are familiar with the old MTV show Jersey Shore, it's the same beach where those characters spent all of their time.
My mom secured us an awesome house just a few blocks from the busiest part of the boardwalk. It had room for more people, but my brother's fiancé was unable to get off of work for this trip.
Before we got to the beach, we had a long drive ahead of us. It is 8 hours from our home, but my brother lives 5.5 hours from us, so we drove to his house and stopped for one night to make the drive to the beach easier. My brother is only about 2.5 hours from Seaside Heights. It was a wise decision and enabled all of us to not become overly exhausted for too much time cramped in the car.
While in my brother's city of Lancaster, PA we mainly only ate food and relaxed together. For dinner, we went to Lancaster Brewing Company. After that, we made a quick visit to a neat little French bakery called Barberet. They were the fanciest desserts ever and tasted just as good as they looked.
The following morning we loaded up the car with 4 adults and two small dogs. It was an easy trip outside of some traffic in a few busy areas.
Once we finally arrived at the beach we walked the boardwalk for a bit and ate some dinner at a Mexican restaurant on the beach. Then went to the store and came home exhausted from the 100-degree temperature. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing together watching things on tv and talking. Then ordered pizza late at night and soon after were ready for bed.
The plan was to get up early each morning and go to the beach and stay there through the afternoon. I'll update you on how successful we were with that in my post tomorrow.