Bethany Beach, Delaware

Day trip today, to the beach, a proper beach that looked out onto the ocean! It was not quite what I expected, but lovely all the same. Bethany Beach is up the coast from Ocean City, which is the high profile beach in the area. It is described by Lonely Planet as the more family orientated beach (compared to Ocean City). It was quite an experience - everyone comes with what looks like a supersized grocery trolley bag (you know, you buy your groceries, put them in this bag on wheels and then trundle home with them?!), that holds beach chairs, beach toys, esky, beach umbrella, possibly a few boogie boards, and then they set up camp. The beach is kilometers long, and it gets covered with camps of brightly coloured beach umbrellas. You can hire umbrellas and chairs if you want. I saw some sunscreen use, but also some tanning lotion  use, and people lounge on the sand all day, getting wet at irregular intervals. There were little dumpy waves, not very kid friendly, and the water got up to chest height very fast. There were life guards at regular intervals, but not many people properly in the water, more paddling. Lots of sand play - one family made a track for a little ball to go down, another family had a sort of shallow pit with walls, and the biggest John Deer dump truck I have seen yet (probably two sizes up from what we see in Australia?). At the back of the beach, is a board walk, with houses and shops built right up to the board walk (on sand...). A very big day (2 hours there), but it involved beach, chips and icecream (more on that later) so feeling very satisfied.