Pacific Beach - San Diego's best!

San Diego is a great city - it is like a diet Los Angles! Great weather, plenty of things to do, but the traffic is not crazy and the folks are a bit more relaxed. If you find yourself in San Diego and want to hit a great beach, then head on out to Pacific Beach!

There are many beaches to choose from in San Diego and many ocean spots to spend some time. I like Pacific Beach because it is not as touristy as some of the other areas: Mission Bay and Beach, the San Diego Harbor, Coronado. Pacific Beach is long stretch of sand running from Palisades Park on the north end, down to approximately W. Mission Bay drive, where it blends into Mission Beach.

My favorite stretch of Pacific Beach is the southern end, near Mission Beach - from Pacific Beach Drive down to Santa Barbara Place. This segment is away from the PB Pier and the tourist attractions, along with being in a residential area of beach cottages and mellow condos. Of course, this means parking is a definite challenge and on weekends many folks park up near the Pier and walk down the Ocean Front Walk to find a mellow place.

The sand is very soft and deep, with a nice light brown color. The vibe is mellow with all the homes and people just enjoying the beach. If you want to grab a work out, then there are plenty of beach volleyball courts and the Ocean Front Walk that runs for miles in each direction. If you want to be creative in your exercise, you can park in PB (as the locals call it) do some kayaking or roller blading at Mission Bay Park (which is just on the east side of the houses), then come relax after your workout on Pacific Beach.

When I have been at PB, I did not find too much opportunity to surf, but that could be because there was not a swell coming in. I don't know if it was the shape of the coast line, but most folks went up towards La Jolla to grab the waves. The water at PB was okay - nothing to write home about, but there was a fair a mount of kelp or sea weed out in the water. For families, it all depends on the swell that day - if there is no swell, then PB is a great because there will be enough shore line waves to keep the kids active, but nothing too scary. If there is a swell, then you will know because there will be lots of surfers out in the water and I would suggest you keep the kids in the white stuff (the wave foam near the beach).

What I liked most about PB, was just how relaxed and friendly people were. Asking a few strangers to play some beach volleyball was no problem and everyone was relaxed. When you would park and walk through the side streets, the residents were just hanging out on their patios, reading the paper and would give you a "hello". There is no traffic noise or beach bar music - just a mellow day at the beach.

Mid-week is the best time to find an emptier beach setting. The weekends can get busy and the Holiday weekends have the potential to become crazy with people. Unlike Los Angeles, which has beaches that almost run the entire coast line of the greater LA basin, San Diego's topography does not allow this. With the hills of La Jolla, the Mission Bay inlet, the San Diego Harbor and the Naval installations around Coronado, it does not have the sheer mileage of non-stop beaches as up north.

Like the Los Angles beaches, PB can get some early spring-summer morning fog, that sometimes will be stubborn and not burn off. You could be in Old Town San Diego putting on sun block, but the beach would still be gray. Usually the mid-summer to mid-fall is the time to catch the San Diego beaches and especially Pacific Beach. The temperatures on the San Diego beaches tend to be about 5 to 10 degrees warmer than the Los Angeles beaches, and this area usually stays away from some of the rainfall that blows into the LA basin in mid winter.

San Diego, because of its well established tourism options has no shortage of places to stay. Luckily, the city is rather quick to get around, so staying in a central location while hitting the San Diego Zoo, catching a ball game or beaching it, is not an all day investment. You can rent a beach place in Pacific or Mission Beach, stay in well to do La Jolla, there are plenty of high end hotels fronting the San Diego Harbor and inland from the beach, off of Interstate 8, the hotel options run for miles.

San Diego is famous for its zoo, proximity to Mexico and the harbor, but you should plan on getting down to Pacific Beach to spend a day - it is the best in San Diego!

Seabrook Island Beach - a Destination beach in South Carolina

With the exception of Myrtle Beach, the majority of the beaches in South Carolina are associated with the island they reside upon. The term 'island' can be a little misleading here, as these spots of land are not off in the distance, removed from the mainland. Rather, these are "low-country", the local term for this part of South Carolina, barrier islands - unless you have a good map, you really could not tell you were on an island.

Seabrook Island and the beach are one of these low-country islands. Seabrook is located about 30 minutes down from Charleston, South Carolina; you may have heard of Kiawah Island, which is the next island closer to Charleston. Seabrook is an affluent area that is a private gated community - to visit the beach you need to be on the pass list of one of the owners or be renting one of the vacation homes. The Seabrook Island development is very nice - the homes are very upscale, they have a golf course and equestrian center, there are various community pools and a beach club. These houses are not inexpensive rentals, as an Internet search on Seabrook Island vacation homes will certify.

Since the community is residential in nature, the majority of vacationers bring in groceries - there is a great shopping spot, just a bit up the road from the main entrance - Freshfields Village. The junction includes a wonderful high end grocery store, a couple of nice restaurants and some local clothing boutiques - it is very close, so making a quick snack run is no big deal.

The beach at Seabrook Island is what I would call a nature beach - here the focus is not really on the beach, because it is really not a great beach. The sand is a dark gray, extremely fine (very hard to get off your skin) and compacted. The water, maybe in part due to the sand color, is not a nice blue or green, but dark. The Atlantic at this spot, tends to be flat and mostly just a swimming beach - body surfing can be limited. To get to the beach, from the parking areas and beach club, you have to walk on a wood boardwalk that takes you over the coastal plain swamps - Beware - the mosquitoes are everywhere.

The one thing that this beach does have is wildlife - we saw deer on the boardwalk and in the grassy areas around the property, the sea shore was experiencing a turtle hatch because of the time of year and the full moon, there were hawks and bald eagles over head. Out in the ocean, we saw some small sharks, again due to the time of the season. But the most amazing thing was watching the dolphin herd a group of mullet into a shallow cove next to the beach to feed - the dolphin were within 10 feet and in such shallow water they actually were more out of the water than in, during 'lunch' time - an amazing experience.

All and all, I would call Seabrook Island Beach a destination spot - it is a very nice development, 30 minutes from the history and shopping of Charleston, top flight golf course and equestrian center, a long, flat beach to walk upon and the opportunity to see Mother Nature at play. As for a beach, you can do better!