Compo Beach

This beach is not in our town in CT and we needed to pay to park there for the day, but we brought our own lunches and snacks and a zillion pounds of beach gear from home to make it a pretty low-cost day full of beautiful summer memories.

Here’s a Packing List:

• Sunscreen (you can even keep the cream version in the cooler so it feels good going on)
• A change of clothes for each person
• Water bottles in a cooler, half of them frozen for later in the day
• Sun protection: rash guards, umbrella, hats, sunglasses
• Kids’ books. If you’re like me, they’ll have a beach theme
• coloring books with markers or colored pencils (crayons melt in the heat)
• A life jacket if your little one is more adventurous than their skills support
• Snacks (frozen drinkable yogurts are great, something salty like pretzels for electrolytes.
• Lunches for all (we do a sandwich, a piece of fruit and some baby carrots)
• We used to do juice boxes too and flavored milk, these might still be good if you know your child won’t drink too much water
• Sand Toys
• Stimmy toys for Michael (like the ones that spin when you pour water over them)
• A couple of chairs, some towels to sit on and some to use to dry off
• Baby powder to get the sand off of feet, if there’s no water hose or shower
• Books for Mom and Dad (just kidding, we never had time to sit and read)

One Note:

We invested in a good beach cart that could hold the chairs and all the gear so I could even handle it when Dave was at work…totally worth looking for one that gets good reviews.

Now when we go to the beach, I bring almost nothing. Mikey and I stand in the waves and enjoy the surf. I carry one bag with my phone, sunscreen and waters. We take shorter trips to beaches closer to our home or vacation spot, usually go pretty early in the day and then head home when it is time for lunch. I sometimes miss the days when he was little, but we can travel so much lighter now…thank God for small blessings!