Hey, everyone! My name is Sam Dale. My life really started as a 6-month-old, when my parents took me from Alexandria, Virginia by train, to the Isle of Palms to see the beach for the first time. And even though it's hard to believe, I basically had as much hair then as I do now. So, as you can imagine I loved the wind in my face. For the next 13 years, my mom's extended family would make an effort to rent a place in the “IOP”, which strengthened my bond with my two cousins and two brothers (one of which is pictured to the left in Jekyll Island).

Although our “posse” of five, still reminisce of our Isle Adventures today, I was always partial to Hilton Head Island. This is where my parents would take my brothers and I before school started back up at the end of the summer. We always stayed at the same Hotel on the Island, one that had an amazing breakfast buffet. I like to see these few trips as my early teen years, where my younger self would age into the next older version, before heading back to my normal world at home. It always gave me a needed escape and of course a good tan.

Even though these are not all my journeys to the beach it seems necessary to end this “round trip” with talking about my most recent voyage. At the end of this past summer my family drove to Jekyll Island to explore the history and beauty of one of the oldest towns in the State of Georgia. It gave a nice allusion to my sending off to college, and what might be my last family trip for a while. But as always, just feeling the wind in face was enough.