I stepped off the warm wooden boards of the public beach house which marks the beginning and will conclude our adventure. The soft white sand pulled my feet in shading them from the hot spring sun. I gaze over the miles and miles of sand through my big bug eyes brown sunglasses. I take another step and now there is no turning back.

Most people on spring break go to hotels on crowded beaches with artificial colored swimming pools in the sand. My dad’s side of the family and I go camping. Yep, you got it. We sleeping tents and campers and sit around campfires. We are outside about 75% of the day.


***

My cousin Olivia, who is three year younger than me, combed the beach looking for sea shells, when my Mom and other cousin Abbie, who is one year older than me, caught up with us. They swept around us turned around to see us with their backs to the sun set.

“Hey, you know there is about 4 miles left of beach to walk if we wanted to the end of the island. We could walk all the way out there if we left early in the morning. We could really do it.” My mom encouraged us.
My cousins and I nodded at my mom. It was a done deal. In the morning we were going to get up before anyone else and hike the ten mile beach including the way back and walk to the beach.

***

The humidity of the air swallowed me whole as my feet where pulled and tugged.

“Get out of bed. Please we have to go so we will have enough time to get there and back.”My younger cousin Olivia proclaimed.

“Ugh.”I complain while dragging myself out of the camper bed and getting my shorts and tank top on.

W get to the beach with the sun up and the sand already warm. The waves are low tide and barly make it to the soft dry sand. The sound of seagulls, crashing waves and the sound of families setting up the areas for the day fill the air. We walk to the edge of the water and snap our heads down. We were seashell hunting.

We walk up the last sight of human civilization: The Beach House. We go to the bathroom and walk to the end of the board walk. I stepped off the warm wooden boards of the public beach house which marks the beginning and will conclude our adventure. The soft white sand pulled my feet in shading them from the hot spring sun. I gaze over the miles and miles of sand through my big bug eyes brown sunglasses. I take another step and now there is no turning back.

The seashells keep getting better and better. We each found about three sand dollars each. The soft fragile surface almost make it impossible for them to make it up onto the shore whole. I can almost see the sun moving over us and causing our shadows to drift. It seems to get hotter and hotter and harder to take another step. I looked behind my shoulder to see how far we have walked. All I see is sand. No beach house of houses, any people, or civilization.

We agree on taking a break near the dunes. It takes us about five minutes to make our way up from the beach shore to the short overlapping dunes. There was some vegetation here or there but for the most part we were alone. The sun was beating us down hard and was a battle we could never win. We drank from our disposable water bottles and ate our Nutrigrane bars down to the last crumbs. We could hear our stomachs rumbling when we sat next to each other on the soft white sand.
In the distance on the other side of the sand bar there were packs of dolphins. Their top fins just bairly making their way out of the ocean water.