The waves of the Atlantic crashed onto the shore as the sea surrounded my feet.  People were just starting to come out to beach to enjoy its nice breeze and cold waters.  When I was six years olds, my parents took me to Ortley Beach New, Jersey where we stayed at my great aunt’s house.  Ortley Beach is a nice beach resort town located on the New Jersey shore.  It has many wonderfully clean beaches that have many clam shells and jellyfish.

            We had been up since dawn getting ready to go to the beach, and we arrived just in time to get ourselves a good spot to set up our beach chairs.  Soon after setting up, I ran into the water and started to swim and float around in the comfortable, salty water.  When the current started to drift me too far away from my parents, I decided to come ashore and start to collect sea shells.  I ran along the beach picking up various, interesting sea shells of different sizes.  Soon, I had a whole bucketful to take home.  My dad came back into the water with me so I could go out into deeper water.  He took me as far out as the first sand bar, which was a long way out.  When we finally returned, we had a tasty lunch of Italian style submarine sandwiches from a famous New Jersey sandwich shop named Jersey Mikes.  Exhausted, I ate hungrily until I could eat no more.

           Once both my dad and I were rested, he asked me, “Doug, would you like to build a sand castle?”

           Since I had never built one before, I eagerly agreed, “Sure dad, let’s build one!”

           “Okay, first we need to wet the sand to build the castle so go get a bucket of seawater,” exclaimed my dad.  My mom, dad, and I then began to dig a wide hole in the sand with my plastic shovels and our own hands.  After the sand was removed, we placed it out around the hole to make a wall for our sand fortress.  To have even more fun, we decided to try to build a tunnel underneath the actual castle using only sand.  We started on both ends, my mom and I on one side and my dad on the other.  My parents and I spent a long time carefully removing the sand and pounding the walls of the tunnel firm and hard.  After we finally broke our fingers through to the next tunnel and cleared away the excess sand, I could see my dad on the other side.  I then went for a swim to wash the sand off of me.  When I returned to the castle, my mom asked me to sta nd in front of it so she could take a picture of me.  That is when I quickly spun around, tripped over the chair, and began my descent.  As I put my arms out to catch myself, I realized that I was about to land directly on top of my newly finished, awesome sand castle.  I made one last desperate attempt to try to avoid landing on the castle, but I couldn’t.  Luckily the damage was minimal.   When I had tried to stop my fall, both of my arms had made only two large holes in the middle of the fortress. We took a picture anyway, for I thought it still looked great.

           As the sun began to set and cast a red glow on the frothing ocean, we decided to leave the beach and walk a little ways down to the boardwalk.  I had never seen a boardwalk, which is basically a big wooden balcony like structure with a permanent carnival on top.  Sadly, the carnival is open only during the summer months.  Fortunately, I was there in the summer, so I got to enjoy the game arcades, booths, candy shops, the many places to eat, and a few roller coasters as well.  We even ate at a pizza parlour named Maruca’s where the waiters yell out the orders in Italian to the cooks, and the cooks clang their pizza pans and yell back at the waiters.  I personally love their sausage sandwiches, while my parents prefer their delicious pizza.

           After a hearty Italian meal, we decided to do one last thing before going back to my great Aunt’s house.  We decided to take a walk on the beach at night.  The cold night air blew fiercely into our faces, and the smell of the salty ocean was all around us.  Great Atlantic breakers crashed the shore in an everlasting cycle.  Faint outlines of the surf stretched out into the deep, dark sea, and the cool sand crunched under our feet.  The cold ocean air refreshed our senses and let us smell the wonderful ocean as we walked all the way home.  When I finally crawled into bed that night, I was full of joy.  The day had been amazing, especially building the sand castle and the walk on the beach.  Finally, I closed my eyes and let the day’s events rush through my mind as I dozed off to a deep sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

ORTLEY ODYSSEY

Douglas P.

Scholastic Writing Silver Key