Seeing the Ocean

Since we were done at Disney, we were looking for other things to do during our stay in Florida. The girls wanted to go to the beach. Since we had been to the Gulf side a couple of times, we thought that it might be different to go over to see the Atlantic. We had done it years ago when the girls were very little but the beaches had been closed due to erosion from hurricanes that had rolled thru the previous summer.

In trying to figure out the best place to go, we decided on Daytona. We thought it would be the best, quickest place to get to. Well that was a little misleading. I was figuring on about an hour to get there, and with the traffic in Daytona itself it took more like an hour and 45 minutes. It also took a little time to figure out exactly where to go where we could have access to the beach. I know you can drive on the beach in Daytona, but I really didn’t want to pay for the privilege of being able to do so.

We ended up finding a public lot right next to the beach, by a run-down looking hotel. I wasn’t quite sure about that, but since I could still see the top of the car from where we were on the beach, I figured it would be fine. The beach itself wasn’t very pretty. In fact, I would call it down right depressing. It was almost like being on a large, long parking lot that gradually faded into the ocean. There were no soft, sand dunes... No shells… Nothing that gave it any charm at all.

And it was very strange in that all the people that were sitting out on the beach were, uhhhh… How can I put this gently, “rough-looking”. It seriously looked like about 75%-80% of the people we saw could have been in an episode of COPS. 

It was also pretty windy down on the beach, and while it was warm, it didn’t feel like there was a very intense sunlight. It felt like the sun was shining thru a haze. I tried to roll up my sleeves, but I just felt like it wasn’t a good place to get a tan. I felt like I had a coating of salt and sand covering me when we left. So as beaches go, on a scale of 1 to 10, this one was about a 2. Next time I think we will definitely consider going to the Gulf side again.