… and all we got was this lousy view:

Terrible, no? This was taken from the back deck of the house where we stayed. (Yes… we were spoiled rotten.)

We got back on Saturday from a somewhat spontaneous mini-vacation! Someone we know owns a townhouse in Ocean City and offered us a chance to stay there if we liked… which we definitely did. So my husband took a few days off work, we packed the kids and the car, and took off for a quick Wed-Sat date with the ocean.

The drives both went well; we’re frequent roadtrippers (Perpetua had five trips of 4+ hours under her belt before her first birthday), so our kids are really very good in the car. I am glad that we’ve had an “early and often” mindset when it comes to travel; in our experience, if you start them young it only gets easier as you go along. I would hate to be facing down a first trip with, say, a five and a three year old who had never done it before.

Ocean City itself reminds me of Niagara Falls: kinda junky, kinda tourist-trappy, but the natural wonder you are there to see lives up to its reputation. Early fall definitely seems like the time to go: the weather is still nice, the ocean is cold but not frigid, and (most importantly) nobody else is there. We had the beach nearly to ourselves most of the time, and if it’s sometimes hard to find a restaurant that’s open weekdays, that’s a small price to pay. It is a little weird walking around the city in the off-season — there’s a definite ghost town vibe. But honestly, a vacation with no one else around is pretty much our ideal situation (being a family of introverted homebodies). It was great.

The water was too cold and our kids too young for swimming, but we walked in the surf and played in the sand. Perpetua took off running straight toward the water every time we set her down. Anselm hung back quite a bit more but still enjoyed getting his feet wet. We didn’t get as much sleep as we would have liked — Anselm was up before sunrise on more that one occasion — but it may be true what they say, that a change is as good as a rest. It was good to have gone, and good to be back. I am grateful.