BLUMmin’ at the Beach

My family hasn’t been on a family vacation, just the five of us, since before I went to college and that was over a decade ago, so we were definitely due for one.

We left shortly after Andy and I came home from church on Sunday and started our first part of the trek to the beach.  We drove the few hours to Hagerstown, MD and as we pulled into our parking spot out front, Kristin’s iPod (a life-saver on long car rides) greeted us with a “Hello everyBODY!” in the Jamaican accent of Sebastian the Crab from the Little Mermaid.  It was a great start to our week long adventure!

We had dinner at the Food Court at the mall near our hotel because we thought it would be easiest with Kristin.  We all got pizza and some garlic knots from a place called the Rigatoni Grill, yet both of the guys working there were clearly Mexican. The pizza lacked flavor and the marinara sauce tasted more like salsa.  It was an interesting meal to say the least!  Luckily the hotel was nice and we got right into some relaxation, played a couple rounds of Farkle and settled in with some good books.  I finished the Inferno by Dan Brown, which I think may be my favorite of all of his books.  It’s a real attention grabber, even from page one!  I highly recommend it, if you’re looking for something to read this summer!

The beautiful skies over the WV mountains.

We got up fairly early and gathered our things together before heading to the complimentary (extremely crowded) breakfast at the hotel.  They had a decent selection of items to choose from and after we stuffed our bellies, we packed the rest of our stuff in the car and loaded up to make the final leg to our destination…the beach!

A little breakfast beach-side was had before some relaxation in the pool.

Breakfast was delicious, despite the cranky people next to us…some people should not drink before noon!

Andy and I took a walk to the other end of the boardwalk.  (Do you like my rendition of the “Where the Boardwalk Ends”?) Like the geniuses we are, we made a mad, barefoot dash to the waves.  We walked roughly 8 blocks back through the surf and discovered what a calf workout walking that distance in sand is truly!  And now we’d like to blame the sun for frying our brain cells because we made another idiotic, barefoot dash across hot sand back to the boardwalk…which unfortunately was about 10 times hotter than the sand and there was not a wash station nearby that worked so we could relieve our poor burning feet.  We made it back to the hotel sweaty and slightly blistered, but I appreciate my brother’s sacrifice of the body to allow me to dip my piggies in the sand.

And because we Blum’s decided to be models and try out some self-photography…

This is without-a-doubt my favorite picture from the whole trip!

I guess I was pictured out from the day before…but I managed to get some pictures of some really tasty food from Bull on the Beach!

Why it took us until the day before we were to leave to figure out that sitting out on our balcony in the evening is pretty relaxing is beyond me, but we did our best to enjoy the cool breezes while they existed and ordered dinner from Surfin’ Betty’s Bar which was just below us between the two hotel pools.

As mom and I placed our order at the bar, a woman rolled out a hotel luggage cart full of Dominoes pizza for her family…
22 large pizzas and 12 orders of breadsticks to be exact!  Doing the math, we figured that if each pizza is $15 and each breadstick is $7, their total not including tax and tip would have been $414!!!  Hope they were hungry!

Oh and I decided to get a little artsy-fartsy while sitting out enjoying the balcony and reading Cemetery Girl by David Bell.

The guys and I took a walk down the boardwalk after dinner to get some last minute souvenirs and some Dumser’s shakes!

Poor Dad lost his t-shirt he had bought on our way back to the hotel, so Andy and I went back down and bought it again.

Early morning sunshine at the beach is blinding and hot, but I managed to get some decent pictures of the beach before it became inundated with umbrellas and scantily-clad bodies.  It was a sad morning, having to pack up all of our stuff after scarfing down some Cinnabons.  We loaded the car and made our way home, surprisingly having to sit through traffic to leave the beach.

Other than the brand new windshield wipers getting stuck together twice, our trip home was uneventful, so much so that Kristin even took a nap, which is unlike her!  It was a fantastic trip, full of sun, fun and family time.  I just wish it would have lasted longer!