Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

It takes a lot for me to be impressed by a beach. Fortunately, we live on one of the nicest beaches in the world and so we are pretty spoiled for beaches. In order to make the list, it needs to have a few things: it needs to be walkable, coves don’t work; it needs to be clean, I want to be able to take off my shoes and not worry; my strong preference would be for it to be secluded, I don’t particularly like sharing. Rockaway beach met all of the criteria.

We decided not to stay in Portland since we really had no reason to stay in Portland and decided instead to book a house right on the beach. We figured after a couple of months of desert we would all be pretty excited for some water. We were right. The house we booked was essentially right on top of a dune. There were only two houses between us and the beach. You could see the water from the kitchen window and almost always hear the ocean.

We spent our days much like we were at the cottage. We played board games, walked on the beach, flew kites, hunted for seashells. The dog lived his best life running up and down the beach and in and out of the water. It wasn’t really warm enough for ‘beach days’ but we still loved our time on the shore.