A New Tradition

Corbin's family owns a house on Assateague Island in MD, near Ocean City. They love that house so much that everybody in the family has to book time there, and an email gets sent out with the schedule every time it is adjusted. Lucky for me, Corbin books about a week there every year.

This summer will be my fifth time at the beach: three summers, one spring break, one Thanksgiving. It reminds me of my own family's beach house, which my grandparents sold almost ten years ago. It was a 50's-style beach-front house on Hilton Head Island, and my dad's family used to spend every summer there. I grew up spending time there every summer, and I remember the first time I walked into Corbin's family's beach house, it smelled the same.

I've always liked going to Ocean City, but this year I'm actually excited in anticipation of it. Every day I think about it and I look forward to it more and more. Perhaps it's because I'll get a five-day vacation from work; perhaps it's because I've been there enough that it's familiar and comfortable to me.

Here are the things I love about the beach:

1. The local farm stand nearby, where we get amazing white corn and other veggies that we cook all week.

2. The local food joints we hit every visit: Smoker's BBQ, Dumser's ice cream, Meroni's, Thrashers...

3. Fractured Prune. This is the donut shop to end all donut shops. Hot cake donuts prepared to your liking. My favorite: the OC Sand, with honey glaze and cinnamon sugar. This has been a Corbannah favorite since our first tandem visit to the beach, and we were thrilled when we found out that there were two in Northern Virginia... then highly disappointed when they both closed. I was also secretly okay with it, though, because I like it being just a beach thing.

4. The boardwalk. This is one of the trashiest places I've ever been but it is so fun. It is lined with souvenir shops, crappy food, and smokers.
    **When I say crappy, I mean amazing. Fried candy bars. Kettle corn. French fries. Fudge. Skewers of
        chocolate-covered strawberries.

5. The beach next to the boardwalk. Last summer we visited the boardwalk at night and walked out to the water, and it was a cool experience being by the peaceful waves yet hearing the voices and music coming from the boardwalk.

6. No alarms. Seriously, when was the last time you went five days without setting an alarm?

7. A new one: Frontier Town. This is the hokey-looking, Country/Western-themed water and mini-golf park near the house. We pass it nearly every time we try to go anywhere, and I've been eyeing it for years, so last year I finally convinced Corbin that we should go. The verdict? Best day of our vacation by far. Spent the morning there, left for a lunch of trashy food on the boardwalk, came back for the afternoon, and ended the day in the low sun, asleep on a tube floating around the lazy river. Glorious.

8. Playing house with Corbin. I know we do this every day because we live together, but it's fun to do it somewhere else. Planning our days, grocery shopping, cooking dinners... I love it.


I'm not sure this list is complete, but just writing it made me even more excited about going. What's your favorite vacation spot, and what do you love about it?