Have you ever been camping on the beach? I don’t mean renting a cabin near the beach either. I mean taking your tent and parking that bad boy right near the water, in the sand, with no one but you and God’s creation around. If not, you should. Recently, Emma and I, together with some friends o ours, made the (long) trek from Austin to North Padre Island. I’ll be honest and admit two things: first, I had never been to Padre and secondly? I had never been beach camping. Now that I’ve been home a few weeks though? I would totally do it all over again.
The idea of camping on the beach actually didn’t appeal to me at first. I’m not one for too much sun because frankly? I’m really light skinned and I burn extremely easy. Then my life fell apart. Like literally. That is a story for another day, but by the time that beach day rolled around, I was more than ready to head to the beach and disconnect from everything and everyone around me. I’m so glad that I did and you know what? I actually think you and your kids should do it too. We spent 4 days and 3 nights camped on the beach and the final night two rooms at a Corpus Christi Econo Lodge so that we could all clean up and get a solid nights sleep.
Beach Camping Tips – Why Every Child Should Go Camping on the Beach
Trust me, as a Mom, I get it. The idea of being near an open body of water with children is scary. I went without my husband and the idea of being down there with only my child was scary to me too even though I knew I’d have a friend with me. The truth is though that both my daughter and I needed to disconnect. We are a society of people who are all attached to our phones, tablets and computers. Day after day, we give so much of ourselves away to those devices, to our jobs, to our homes and more but we rarely give ourselves to each other. In the parent/child relationship, that can’t happen.
I have long admitted that I am not Super Mom and that I am perfectly fine with that. I don’t need to be a super hero to my daughter. I only need to be the Mom that she needs and a Mom who tries. I do fail at that at times though and that two month period was one of those times. I needed to disconnect. She needed to disconnect. She needed me to disconnect and just go be Mom. What I found though was not only a piece of myself that I had been missing for quite a while, but I also found a way to teach my child that she had missed out on over the last few months as life continued to become more and more hectic.
How? Life.
Simply put, life.
So why do I think that your children should go camping on the beach too?
Because where else can your kids watch the sun paint the sky like this every night?
Because ghost crabs are creepy…and your kids need to see them in person to understand.
Because watching baby Kemp sea turtles be released into the ocean really is a once in a blue moon opportunity.
Because watching your friend and his daughter bond a bit makes the sand blowing everywhere totally worth it. Also? Boogie boards ya’ll.
No really. I mean sand blowing everywhere…
and because getting them golden brown (or in her case, flaming and cajun) is oh so important!
and because everyone should be buried in the sand at least once in their lives…
and finally? Because sun burnt and wind blown really isn’t as bad as it seems.