How often do you make it to the beach?

Thanks!  It is my hometown of Oceanside, California.  (We are in North San Diego County.)

Not often enough!  Once or twice a year.  

I would love to be 5 minutes from the beach.  

Ha we live 5 minutes from the beach but only go (as in pack up the kids and sand toys and put out chairs) about once a year. It's too hard to battle the tourists!

I've been to the beach (Florida gulf) every day for the past 5+ weeks.  I only have 5 days left, though, then it's back home, where I will probably never visit the Lake Michigan beach and its frigid water that's a few miles from our home.  We get here for a week in the fall, a couple weeks in the winter and a week in the spring, but never is the beach as glorious as it is in the summer!  

We last went about two or three years ago. We don't live that far from a beach, but too from from a "nice" beach.

Newlywoods--the sand dollars are found living right under the sand, usually on sand bars, not the breakers on the beach. I grew up at Atlantic Beach, NC, which is right at the Beaufort Inlet and the Intracoastal Waterway. We'd get sand dollars by the bucket full on sandbars--anchor up the boat and dig under the sand. You do have to soak the sand dollars in bleach because they have an outer green layer.

It sure beat buying sand dollars for $1 a piece at the shell shops.

I haven't been to beach in the past two years. I've just not gotten there. I really miss it. Going back to the beach where my parents lived and dh and I got married is bittersweet since my dad died. The place has really changed so it's not very nostalgic.

My cousin lives at a beach near Wilmington. Dh and I hope to spend a weekend in Wilmington and Fort Fisher for a vacation this summer. We were going to take a week and drive down Hwy 17, a coastal highway, from NC down to St. Simon's. Dh and I have just not felt like doing that. We also want to visit friends in Tenn when we go visit dh's parents in SC later this year. --our friends live an hour from the NC/TN border and the inlaws are only an hour south of Asheville.

I wish I could live on the beach again. I'd love to sit out on the beach and read. It's just so expensive to live there plus the major hospital systems are a couple hours away. My doctors would have a fit if I lived 2 hours away from a major stroke/cardiac arrest trauma center.

Whenever I have to have tests or whatever and the techs tell me to close my eyes and find my "happy place" I always imagine I'm lying on a beach towel in the sand with the salt breeze and warm sunshine. Pure Bliss.

We are about 60 miles from the beach, but not a very nice one (Galveston). We go down there once or twice a year.

I love the beach and don't get there nearly often enough.

Like, down onto the beach to enjoy the sun and the surf?  Probably a half dozen times a year. A few times when it's just warmed enough to enjoy and a few more times when it's just cooled off enough to enjoy. But during the peak of Summer, I avoid it for the most part. Too hot, too much seaweed, too many tourists. 

Just within sight of the water? Close to once a week, year-round. I live really close to Galveston Bay and not far from the Gulf of Mexico. There are so many parks, restaurants, and other attractions at the water. Even in the middle of what we call Winter I like to go do things near the water. 

We take a beach vacation every summer--this year it's the OBX. I lived in a coastal CT town for several years before I met DH and moved inland. I walked my dog along LI Sound every day--heaven. Now I'm probably about 45 minutes away from the nearest beach so I hardly ever go. When DH retires I want to move to a coastal town again.

I live in Utah now, but grew up in Washington. I try to visit the ocean at least once per year and hope to retire to the Oregon coast someday!

Melissa

I have heard of that beach, but I have not been there.

Not very often which is sad considering I live on an island! When we first moved here we went frequently but we kind of got bored with it. Now we just can't seem to find the time.

We live an hour away from the nearest beach (we have a river close by, but you have to be suicidal to try to swim there), so not often. Also, summers here are generally quite cold, so water temps rarely get above 18 celsius.