Going for an overnight (or two or three) with a 5-year-old and a 1-year-old means bringing the baby tub, the potty, the potty seat and the potty step. I nearly brought the extendable shower head too. You really do not want to go camping with me.
We spent a few quiet days at the Washington coast for Joseph's spring break. Give two little boys each a stick on a stretch of beach, and they will be perfectly happy to poke and flick wet sand all morning.
Update: my story and photos about Seabrook ran on ParentMap! Here's a
link.
Walk along the beach, swim in the pool, roast s’mores. And repeat.
The best kind of vacation is the one where you don’t come home feeling like you need a vacation. Seabrook, a planned beach town on the Washington coast, fits that bill for families with young children and dogs. There’s not much to do beyond being beach bums and strolling through a sweet little town. That’s the whole point.
Seabrook founders Casey and Laura Roloff were looking for a beach community, like the ones along the Oregon coast. They didn’t find anything they liked, so they started their own. Seabrook broke ground in 2004, and now includes 335 houses.
The Roloffs, along with their four daughters, are among the 40 or so families who live at Seabrook full-time.
Seabrook is still in its “infancy,” the woman in the sales office told me. Everywhere you look, there’s more construction. The site covers 350 acres, and over the next 20 years or so, Seabrook will grow to 1,100 homes. The structures are designed in a New-England-meets-Pacific-Northwest style and the neighborhoods are carefully laid out around parks. The place is immaculate – we saw staff constantly cleaning up, picking up trash, keeping every oyster shell in its place.
There is something “Truman Show”-esque about this new vacation community. A posse of kids cruise by on candy-colored bikes. Boys tumble on the grass with a football. It seems too perfect to be real. Ten years ago, I would have rolled my eyes at the manufactured charm; now as a mom I love how everything’s an easy walk to the beach.
We started visiting Seabrook when our family went from three people to four. I was never a rugged person and having two little kids just makes me love my creature comforts even more. We pick a different cottage each time, a 2-bedroom at mid-season rates. After taxes and fees, the bill winds up being about $250 a night. (Check for
last-minute deals and other discounts on the Seabrook site. Mid-season rates are now available through June 15.)
I always pick a house with a no-pet policy; my 5-year-old always asks for a house with bunk beds. Seabrook has about 180 houses available for rent, sleeping anywhere from 2 people to 22.
Each cottage is fully stocked with kitchenware, lots of linens, and – hooray! – a washer and dryer. I’m a Type A germ-a-phobe, and visiting Seabrook is the one time of the year my OCD relaxes. The kids track sand inside, climb into bed wearing dirty clothes and we crank up the heat. Hey, it’s not my house. My husband deadpanned, “My favorite part of this vacation is the warm house.”
The houses are tastefully decorated in a modern, beachy style. If you want to browse sea-themed knick knack souvenirs, you can wander through the retail district. There are 18 merchants, including a bakery, a toy store, a paint-your-pottery shop and a bike rental shop. Seabrook has an indoor pool and a fitness center too, both amenities included with your stay. For us, the beach was the biggest draw.
Even on a cold, wet day, we bundled up and took the kids to the ocean's edge. There’s a staircase down a 70-foot bluff, or you can take a meandering path (the “gnome trail”) through the woods to the beach. My boys were entertained by poking sticks into the wet sand and flinging it. When the sun dried things out, they loved sinking their feet into that soft sand.
After a day of wind and sand and swimming, my kids were more than ready for bedtime. But then we’d poke our heads out and see that someone started a fire in the communal fire pit. And we’d run out with our marshmallows and fixings. My 1-year-old kept a vise grip on his first-ever s'more until every last sticky crumb was gone.
Driving home is painful, between the traffic and leaving that idyllic scene behind. As the Seattle skyline finally came into view, I picked out the Space Needle, Columbia Tower... and the homeless encampments along the side of I-5. Just for a second, I looked for the oyster shell-lined paths and the s’mores pits.
What parents should know
- You need to pack your food in.Your options for eating out are limited to the one restaurant and pizza place in town. If you forget the milk or run out of yogurt, there's a small market stocking the essentials. Expect to pay double the regular price for some tired produce. Or drive 15 miles to the IGA in Ocean Shores.
- Bring a baby carrier.Oyster-shell paths and a long flight of stairs down to the beach make a carrier more practical than the stroller.
- Everything at Seabrook is close.What looks like a long distance on the map is at most a 10-minute walk.
- Bring your bikes and scooters,or rent them when you arrive. Flat, newly paved streets with little traffic are a dream for budding cyclists.
- Dress in layers.Even when we’re roasting in Seattle, it’s chilly on the coast.
- It's a long haul.The good thing is once you get to Seabrook, you won’t get in your car again. But plan on taking at least 3.5 hours with traffic. Check out our list of easy pit stops on I-5.
