At The Beach ...

Since the topic for this upcoming edition of the Carnival of Genealogy is on either swimsuits or beach stories, I thought I would just share a few brief memories of being at the beach. (No, I am not going to post pictures of me or other family members in swimsuits. I don't want to embarrass anyone or have them get angry at me. Plus, I don't have any pictures of ancestors in swimsuits, so I'm going to opt out of the swimsuit category.)

When I think of beaches, I think of several different places: the coastlines of the Great Lakes, the beaches of Michigan inland lakes, the Outer Banks, the East Coast, and the coast of Florida, especially the coastline along the Gulf of Mexico. Of course, these are beaches that I have been to, so they are the ones that I picture when I hear the word, "Beach." But the beach that sticks out the most in my memories is the beach my family would go to when we visited relatives in Florida.

Of all the times that my family would visit Florida, it seems as though most of them were spent in Florida in the summer. Since we would visit during the warmest part of the year, going to the beach was a frequent activity. And yes, we would swim in the water, but would never go out too far. (The deepest we would go out was probably shoulder or neck deep. At least, while still being able to touch the floor. The only problem with being in the water constantly was that the water would wash off the sun screen, and we would end up getting sunburned. (I can get sunburned very easily, so every time I get burned, it hurts. The few times that I have been sunburned have been enough for me to want to stay out of the sun or put on as much sun screen as I can before go out into the sun. I don't like being out in the sun in the summer too long because of those experiences.)