Best summer vacation

If I had to pick my best summer vacation experience ever, it’d have to be my recent trip last year in 2018 to Ocean City, Maryland (OCMD) with my mom, her boyfriend, my two little brothers, my cousin from Ohio, my uncle and aunt and two of their kids. It was not only a vacation, but also a birthday trip for my mother who turned 40 years old. I know Ocean City is one of the most popular and common place to go for vacation in the summer in this part of the country, but I enjoy it way too much.

It’s most likely because my half-Latin side has never experienced the islands of which my maternal side comes from (Puerto Rico and Cuba) and what they have to offer, like the beautiful weather and exotic lifestyles. OCMD just brings most of that back to me and is one of my three ‘happy places’ in the world so far.

Anyways, we all went to the beach almost every day during the long week we were on vacation. The only exception was the first day when we arrived because it unfortunately decided to downpour rain on our vacay that day, but it was an opportunity for us to relax, settle in, spend some quality family time together, and plan our days for the rest of the week.

We wanted to stay as active as we possibly could on vacation because all we ever do is the necessary things in life like school, work, and chores, then become lazy when the day is almost over, but not this time. We had things to do every single day.

We went to the boardwalk where I got multiple henna tattoos with my cousin and brother. We went mini-golfing trying out the two different courses only across the street from one another and up the street from our apartment we rented right by the bay.

There was a dock and the bay, which was covered in all different types of crabs my brothers kept trying to catch every day; we even had to buy two crab cages for them to use and raw chicken for bait. It worked sometimes, but most of the time the crabs would just climb in the cage just to steal the bait and run; they were very clever in avoiding us.

We eventually used the bay to kayak in and traveled to the part of the dock to measure the water to figure out if we could swim in it, but it was way deeper than expected so we decided against the idea. The beach was my favorite place to go overall.

I love the feeling of swimming freely on a hot, summer day and getting in touch with one of our beautiful oceans. A lot of people are afraid of the ocean because of the unknown things in it, the animals that might harm us, and how deep it goes, but I find it exhilarating.

It gives me the best feeling of freedom; it’s a great form of exercise and it feels awesome laying out under the sun to dry and enjoy the warmth. Warmth is what I crave the most in that environment because it invokes that I’m in a place where I can relax and feel good in nature. I hope to go back as much as I want in the next few years and hopefully it’ll inspire me to travel elsewhere for the warmth and new oceans I crave to acknowledge and discover in my lifetime.