Bookmark - Allison in Maui / The Beach

There is nothing like seeing joy in your children.  Here is Allison on her college graduation trip to Maui.  She, like her paternal grandfather, is a beach person and happiest near the ocean.  Unfortunately for her, she's the only one in our nuclear family, as neither Chenjean, Andrew nor I care much for it at all.  Thus our family vacations have focused on more inland destinations...with the exception of cruises, of course.  Even then our excursions leaned toward activities that took us away from the beach, as seen if you've following this blog from years past.

And why don't I like the beach? I'm asked occasionally.  The answer is very simple and three-fold:  I don't like sand, I don't like constant wind, and I don't like to swim in a place where creatures bump into your legs.  The most miserable vacation endured as a child was when my dad - very much a beach person as stated above - took the family to camp out on Padre Island for an entire week.  He and Mom stayed in one of those pop-up trailer campers, but the four of us boys got to sleep in some tents on loan from our Boy Scout troop.  This was in the days when they didn't have floors, I think acquired from military surplus stores that were common in the day.  I was constantly miserable.

There are memories left over from that time, however.  It was interesting to watch sand crabs run sideways into our nightly fire; climbing the big sand dunes was good exercise; and we rented a dune buggy, which we used to climb those same dunes.  Think my brothers enjoyed that.

The beach pictured in the bookmark above was something of an exception in that the wind wasn't bad, there was no sand, and the rocks prevented us from going into the water.  So we all enjoyed this trip.