Virginia Beach

Question: What is the largest city in Virginia?

Unscripted fun in abundance
Answer: Where I swam in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time.

We didn't stick around the in-laws house for long before packing our bags and heading for Virginia Beach, the largest city in Virginia and home to the largest pleasure beach in the world. Meg had taken the boys to Virginia Beach a few weeks prior to my arrival, but now she sought to prove to me what a beach is supposed to be like. For those who grew up in Oregon and went to the beach in the summer, you got used to wearing pants and sweaters while on land, and only the brave or stupid attempted to wade out in the ocean beyond their calves. I have been to Hawaii before and loved swimming in the ocean surrounding those islands, and I trust that the Atlantic is warmer, but still: it's hard to erase behavior that has been burned into your brain for decades.


Ian preferred to stay on dry land
After a three-hour drive south and east, we parked our cars in a residential area a few miles north of the main strip in town, which I thought was great because we avoided the crowds and over-priced parking. We weren't the only ones to make the drive--probably about 20 of the Booren clan made the trip. When I opened the door I was greeted by something unexpected: heat. Like 90 degrees of it. I don't remember any wind, either. The only relief was the occasional clouds that fluttered by. Or, there was that huge ocean of salt water. I took my chances with the clouds, at least for the first few hours. But that was okay, because who else was going to capture on pixels the excitement and adventure of our huge group?

Old dog learning new tricks
Eventually I put my camera down and waded out into the ocean. I tried to acclimate myself by inching out further and further, and I reached that point where I said screw it and dove in. I swam back and forth, keeping an eye on my kids (Aaron and Edward were in the ocean most of the time, while Ian stuck to the beach building sand castles), but that got old after a while. We had two bodyboards to share, but they were pretty popular, and I didn't think it right to ask one of the kids to give one up and let me try. So I tried riding the waves without any type of flotation device, and it was fun for a while, but as soon as I spied one of the kids chucking a bodyboard on the beach, I rose out of the water, sprinted as fast as I could to the beach, grabbed the board, and sprinted back out into the waves to look for a free ride. It really wasn't that hard to get the hang of catching the waves, and it was equally fun trying to sprint back into the ocean after a long ride to catch the next wave.

We spent the night in a hotel a few miles from our beach, all five of us to a room. Meg slipped out for a while, claiming to go on a walk with her sisters, but subsequent pictures proved there were others (I think she just got tired of me after a few days). I think we all slept well, the beach having tired us all out, and we were back in the waves after a junk-food breakfast and packing our bags. Aaron tried to resist returning to the beach, claiming he had already had enough time there, but within a few minutes of hitting the sand he was having fun again. I think we stayed until 3:00 in the afternoon before heading back inland to grandma's house. Meg got tired along the way and asked me to drive, which is quite unusual because I never drive with her. But apparently I'm super slow because the rest of the caravan made it back 45 minutes before us.
Location: Virginia Beach, VA, USA

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