Did you see my picture from last week? Those are my girls at the beach. As much as I love to see their smiling faces, there’s something about those “behind” pictures that I just love!
My family had a great time down in Hilton Head, SC last week. We always look forward to our big summer vacation although this year I was distracted with work so I wasn’t nearly as organized as usual.
The biggest worry was how to survive 16 hours in the car without killing each other! Even my youngest kept saying she was scared about vacation because of the long drive. For that, however, we had a plan!
Virginia Beach is exactly the half way point between our part of NY and Hilton Head so we planned on breaking up the trip by staying overnight there. We embarked on our journey at 3:45am (to avoid NYC traffic and so the kids could sleep for part of the trip) and we arrived at Virginia Beach around lunchtime.
We continued our trek to SC the next day (at a reasonable hour!) and arrived at 4pm, unpacked, had dinner, and hit the pool (nope, no jellyfish in the pool).
We own a timeshare through the Marriott Vacation Club so the resort we stayed at had easy beach access but even with that easy access, holy cow! What a production is was to get to the beach! Between the towels, the chairs (which broke after Day 2), the umbrella, the boogie boards, the sand toys, the snacks & drinks…needless to say, we have a new appreciation for those shopping-cart-type-strollers that everybody seemed to have.
What no one warned us about, unfortunately, was the fact that the lifeguards put up yellow Caution 
flags when the jellyfish are in the shallow water. So there we were, hanging in the incredibly warm water, enjoying the sun and our time together, when my hubby gets stung. We had no clue what it was, figured it was some weird bug (duh!)
**Note: They only look this glowing red color in the aquariums. They might as well be invisible at the beach!
Then I got stung, not just once but multiple times, and then each of the girls got stung. No, we weren’t very smart about getting out of the water immediately but there were still other people in the water so we followed the crowd.
Only after we all got stung and got out of the water did my husband talk to the lifeguards and they confirmed that it was indeed jellyfish that stung us. However, it’s not like we had to rush to the ER for treatment. The sting is strong, like multiple bee stings or severe razor burn, but it fades after maybe 20 minutes.
But it was enough to kill the beach for that day.
My question is: do jellyfish leave a mark on your skin when they sting? I was the only one with red marks on my arm, which I assumed was from the sting, but nobody else has marks. AND, now that we’ve returned home, it’s red, puffy, itchy, AND spreading!
Me thinks this creeping crud isn’t from the jellyfish…
