After arriving in Savannah, me and wife spent an afternoon on the Tybee Beach. The water was remarkably warmer and clearer than Ocean City, MD, with a smaller crowd. Plus it had sand bars, so we could go pretty far out "into the ocean"

Many sand castles were built and destroyed that day.

Visiting a friend in a place I used to live - Wilmington, NC. Many beers and drinks during the afternoon, sitting on the waterfront porch of some eatery whose name I have forgotten. Decided I needed to get into the ocean, so went to JC Penneys for board shorts, and a drive through liquor store for more beer. Wrightsville beach was nice and quiet, the tourists had left, and I was pleasantly buzzed and joyous at being in the company of a good friend. Swam. Saw a woman who was in one of my classes years earlier, maybe one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Said hello, kissed her, ate dinner on the beach, and spent the night with her and my good friend.

Ahhh bachelor-hood.

My whole childhood. I know I was pretty lucky.

I always hated the beach. Hot, sticky, sandy, crowded, annoying, boring.

Until we went to Playa del Carmen, Mexico for a friend's destination wedding about a year and a half ago. It was so lovely. The water was warm and clear. The sun was warm but there was a constant ocean breeze that kept it from getting oppressively hot. Hotel staff would set up a big umbrella for you wherever you wanted it and bring you ceviche and beer. There were people around but not too many. Typically I'm done and bored with the beach experience after just one day - but there, I could have easily stayed another week in Playa del Carmen.

Oh man, I really could use a vacation like that right now.

Well, I don't know about BEST, but once boyfriend and I were at the beach here, and we were lying on the sand reading, and the water was very calm but the tide was coming in, but we were keeping an eye on it and staying well out of reach, when suddenly this ENORMOUS freak killer wave broke, and the water came RUSHING in all around us, and all our books and towels and things were swamped, and it was too too hilarious and we had to walk a mile or so back to the house with things that all weighed a lot more than they had earlier.

My family went to a resort near Playa del Carmen for Christmas last year. It was great. I chilled under the beach umbrella and read mostly. But my brother and I also did a session on waverunners, which was also great. Though I wasn't as lucky with the ceviche as misskaz--I'm a little jealous now.

All of them!

I've lived on the beach whenever possible. I can't pick just one beach experience. Being at the beach transcends time. it's almost a religion for me.

One favorite, though, was when I finally made it up to Acadia NP in Maine and went to Sand Beach. Last week in June. The water was 50. I never turned down a plunge in salt water in my life, and I wasn't about to start, but 50-degree salt water is f**cold. Still, we went in, then lay on the sand enjoying being in Maine! Holy cow! Then clambered around the rocks.

ARGH SAND

Sarasota Florida, either Lido Key or Siesta Key, water warm as bathwater and clear as crystal...and I was young and looked great in a swimsuit.

I lived in Sarasota for awhile, broke but happy.

Yeah, I've always lived near the beach, so it's hard to pick one time. I went down to the beach and piled rocks just last night, and saw an owl! I fell in love in high school at a beach campout, and I kind it was a Big Deal when the guy vanished from my sight for the first time all weekend and came back, wordlessly, with my shorts, that I had forgotten somewhere. Red Tide is always way up there, and picnics at Natural Bridges in Santa Cruz were the way I spent last summer. I like the beach much more as an adult than I did as a kid, when I couldn't keep sand out of my food effectively.

This past Memorial Day, when I spent a few days chilling in an oceanfront hotel room at Virginia Beach, doing nothing but drinking heavily, smoking heavily, and reading trashy romance novels while listening to trashy television. Oh it was awesome.

A trip to the Virgin Islands in 2006 with my boyfriend of the time, an acrobat. Late one night, we took the dinghy ashore and decided to sleep on the beach. I had my shortwave radio and two sets of headphones. The lights on the pier were glimmering and rocking gently with the tides; I tuned unbelievable radio from parts of the world barely audible in our hometown. He drifted off next to me, lost in the slowly turning sonic haze. Sometime around 1:00 in the morning, another couple strolled by with their dog. The pup came up to bid a friendly sniffing hello to my sleeping boyfriend, who promptly screamed and levitated six feet straight into the air. I nearly died laughing. The dog, offended, trotted off. Needless to say, we went back to the boat.

I forgot skinny-dipping in broad daylight from the dunes off Provincetown. That was awesome.

Growing up in California, I loved going to the beach. Right up until about age 9 or so, that is - then it became a hot, crowded, not-really-all-that-fun thing to be endured.

The Washington coast has restored a great deal of my enjoyment of the beach. Every time we've been to La Push has been absolutely fantastic.

The last time were were there, we went down to Third Beach; as we walked along the shore, we were followed by about six or seven harbor seals out in the water. They probably just happened to be heading in the same direction we were, but it really did seem as if they were watching us watching them. At any rate, they stayed with us the entire length of the beach - about a mile or so.

My beach memories are glommed together. I have so many of them. I grew up on the beach. Some of my best memories is when my best-friend and I would go topless, would venture out to very deep water after the lifeguards where gone for the day. We would sit on the beach and exfoliate ourselves with the grainy beach sand. A little north of us is Flagler Beach. Flagler Beach used to be covered, and I mean covered, in gorgeous beach shells. It was something out of a postcard. We went to Flagler a lot us a kid because you could never drive on Flagler beach like you could on Daytona Beach. It was safer and more peaceful. Now, thankfully, there are many areas of Daytona Beach, Daytona Beach Shores, and Ponce Inlet where driving is not permitted. I have memories of standing on my father's shoulders and diving into the water. I have many memories, summer after summer, and numerous spring breaks spent on the beach with friends from school. We used to line up our chairs and bake and play volleyball and Frisbee. When MTV used to come here I saw many concerts on the beach.

Today I skipped my previous plans and went to the dog beach in Ponce Inlet. Goldie is a great swimmer and loved playing with the other beach dogs.

I grew up near a beach too, but not the white-sand-and-bikinis type of beach. Rocky, coarse volcanic sand, cold ocean. My sister and I went to the beach any time we were happy or sad or upset; there wasn't much else to do in small town Alaska that won't get you into trouble. We would throw rocks at seagulls, make designs on the sand with mussle shells, toss slimy seaweed at each other, skip rocks, roast marshmallows over a bonfire.

Every summer she and I would keep an eye on the tides and would pray for a low tide in the afternoon of a hot (read: 60°F +) and sunny afternoon. We would drive down the beach in my pickup, take off our shoes and glasses (I lost a pair to the ocean once because I thought the tide was going out when it was actually coming in), and run into the water. We never thought ahead to put towels or blankets or changes of clothes in the truck, so we rode home dripping wet.

Onne of our last summers doing this, I was 19 and she 16, we attracted the attention of some college-aged male tourists. We convinced them into the water with us and they screamed like girls while we swam in circles laughing.

During a particularly long, hot stretch through some anonymous mid-Atlantic state on a road trip from Chicago to Maine, my parents decided they needed to see some water, immediately, and so found a lake on the map that was only two hours away and made a beeline for it. We found a meandering, dusty road that lead us to a beautiful sandy shore ringing a perfectly still blue-green lake, empty as a postcard. Mom set up lawn chairs and settled in to read her book while my dad, my sister, and I cheered and ran into the water, laughing and splashing wildly.

A few minutes later, we heard slapping and screaming behind us. We turned to find Mom screeching and sprinting full bore to the lake, frantically waving a towel around herself. We started to rush toward her, but she stabbed her fingers at the open water behind us, yelling, "Swim! Swim!"

The flies had found us.

Huge, nasty biting flies swarmed the beach and shallow water in angry, buzzing clouds. The horde sent search parties every few minutes out to us, and we moved into the deepest water my little sister could handle on her tippy-toes, me kneeling and my mother and father sitting cross-legged so only our heads poked out, bobbing them below the surface to hide our scent. We tried waiting them out as long as we could, but eventually our arms started shivering and our lips turned blue and we decided to make a run for it.

We've never spoken of that day since.

there was my first trip to a nude beach, down in Florida. I immediately stripped down to get in the spirit of things, but the sand was hot, so I kept my black Chuck Taylors on. I must have been a sight. I was also fishbelly white, so much that people wre literally thrusting tubes of sunscreen at me. i waved them off, because I'm so hardcore. The next day, I woke up looking boiled and had to endure a 23-hour Greyhound ride with a badass sunburn. Next time, I mad sure to protect all over.

Growing up in SoCal we went to the beach at least a couple times per summer. There was one place Bro#1 would take us. I think it was in Laguna Niguel and called Table Rock but it was a long time ago. It had much prettier water than most of the area and lots of tide pools.

I miss the ocean.

La Push looks gorgeous, bmarkey! I'm wondering if I can talk the mister into a long weekend there...