The Trip to the Beach

Before leaving Corpus Christi for the summer, I shipped my big blue long board to Columbia - at great expense, I don’t mind mentioning, but it was worth every penny for the enthusiastic reception the boys gave it. By the time I arrived in South Carolina, PJ, River and Sage were pretty worked up about getting a chance to learn to surf, so last week we headed for the beach.

According to wannasurf.com, South Carolina has 50 surf spots along its 187 miles of coast. I did a most cursory investigation into our choices. The parameters were a consistently breaking wave suitable for all surfers, uncrowded on weekdays and near a campground. That rapidly narrowed the field from 50 to 3, which was further decreased upon calling around. Huntington Beach was the only state park near a surf spot that actually had a tent site available between now and September.

While Paul and I both profess a love for camping, neither of us has done enough of it in the past 15 years to have accumulated all the gear necessary to comfortably take ourselves and three urban kids on a trip. So we made two excursions to Target on the eve of the expedition. We wound up spending the equivalent of a night’s lodging in a 5-star beachfront hotel purchasing an awning, beach chairs, a camp stove and fuel, a cooler and enough inflatable beds for everyone plus enough mosquito repellent to quell the kids’ noisy concerns. (River will be the first to regale you with individual tales for each of the more than 100 mosquito bites he obtained on his last camping trip to the beach.)

You know those minivans you’ve laughed at on the highway, the ones so loaded down with gear strapped on top that they’ve had to buy the optional rack for the back on which are stacked Rubbermaid containers that bulge with God-only-knows-what? We were starting to understand those people as we tried to fit all our new camping gear plus enough food, drink, sunscreen and Sophie the dog inside the van. I thought I had it all figured out until this thought crossed my mind: “Wait, where are the kids going to sit?”

Finally we were on our way, driving down the highway with everything and everyone inside. Ok, it wasn't exactly a surf van, but we hoped we passed for cool, since the only thing strapped to the outside was the radical surfboard. We got all the way to Z with “I’m going to Hogwarts Beach Resort and taking an Animagus, Bertie Bott’s Every-Flavour Beans, Crookshanks the Cat, etc.” and arrived at Huntington Beach, where we set up our tent and extracted the beach chairs, slathered everyone in sunscreen and walked the 150-yard path to the beach.

Let me interject here: Huntington Beach, SOUTH CAROLINA is not on wannasurf.com. In fact, Paul and I knew this wasn’t an actual surf spot - that the nearby breakers at Garden City or Surfside Pier were what we wanted. But by the time pulled into the state park, there had been so much of that “how-much-longer?” emanating from the back that we couldn’t bear the thought of another 10 minutes in the van.

With my experience, it was wildly optimistic of me to think that there would be anything rideable at Huntington if it hadn’t even warranted a mention on wannasurf.com, but - what can I say? I’m wildly optimistic. It’s usually not a bad thing.

It was an absolutely beautiful, uncrowded beach with lovely tall grass on the dunes and osprey soaring overhead. But not only were there no rideable waves, the wind was blowing 6,000 miles per hour and the current was so strong that it made even wading a challenge. I took the board out purely to demonstrate the impossibility of surfing there. The current promptly turned it side shore and I sailed a quarter-mile down the beach in about 2.3 seconds. We didn’t even try to put up the awning, opting instead for tossing down a blanket, upon which the 6,000-mile-per-hour wind promptly blew 2,000 pounds of sand. PJ and Sage sulked while I fretted over causing such tremendous disappointment.

Meanwhile, River bounded into the surf with the whoops of joy only an 8-year-old can manage. Paul followed suit and soon I gave up my ministrations to the teens, who were determinedly not responding to my crazy ideas: “We could build a sand castle! We could collect seashells! We could bodysurf, come on, bodysurfing’s just as fun!” Sage said, “I’m going back to the tent” and slumped off, while PJ chose to remain in a chair staring wistfully at the uncooperative sea.

Paul and I got in touch with our inner children alongside River: we dove into the thumpy waves that broke close to shore and leapt over the top of the foamy whitewater. We dug holes in the wonderfully crunchy Atlantic coast sand and watched the ocean fill them up again. As the sun sank low against the dunes to the west, we packed up the sandy gear and headed back to camp, where we cooked up some hot dogs and slapped at mosquitoes.


It was around sunset when the whole thing turned into a Chevy Chase movie. We plugged the 12-volt air pump into the cigarette lighter of the van and started blowing up beds. I can’t decide what was more embarrassing - the noise we produced trying to create comfort or the fact that the car battery died in the middle of the third bed, forcing us to ask a nearby camping French Canadian to jumpstart the van.

But eventually beds were inflated, kids were showered and fed, marshmallows were toasted and everyone was tucked in for the night.

And this is one way to test and be sure that you and your partner are well-suited for each other. When you are lying in a tent in the middle of the night and the kids have just finally fallen asleep after fussing for hours about the mosquito bites and the extreme heat and the sand in their underwear so now the two of you, the supposed grownups lying there bathed in your own thick sweat, are finally about to drift off to sleep yourselves. Then a loud crack of thunder positively shakes the entire campground and the lightning lights up the sky in every direction and then ... and then ... the rain begins.

As the rain gets louder and more insistent, you roll over and say to him, "At what point are we going to declare this trip a complete disaster?" and the two of you just start cracking up.


P.S. I finally got my first taste of boiled peanuts - that truly Southern treat - so the trip wasn't a complete disaster!