[senior citizen]

Originally Posted by pooh

Grew up on the beach, beginning part of Buzzards Bay so salt water is in my blood. Every day in the summer was spent at the beach, just a very, very short walk, 4 houses away. Ocean water was just a part of life.

When I finally got to live near the Pacific, again, nothing out of the ordinary since I had spent so many years around water. What I did notice though, the Pacific was a heck of a lot colder than the Atlantic AND the air at the beach on the left coast didn't smell quite the same as it did on the right coast....

Katama Beach in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts was that really big open wide beach, right? It reminds us of the beach in Prince Edward Island Canada where Anne of Green Gables is located.
Huge, empty of people and very wide.

We would drive to Woods Hole, Mass and take the ferry across to Martha's Vineyard........after being there a week, we'd take the bigger ferry over to Nantucket (where you couldn't drive your car).

I should get out a map to see where Buzzard's Bay is.
After college, our daughter and her husband lived near Boston in Cambridge.........then Quincy where they bought a condo.....prior to relocating back to northern Vermont. But our beach days in Mass were when they were teenagers and then when we had the "empty nest".

Funny you should mention the "air" as we had a neighbor in town here (who retired to Saratoga Springs, New York) but was born in Brooklyn, New York. When they'd go to Florida they were amazed at how BLUE or AQUA the water looked compared to their "grey" water at the shore in N.Y. where her family still lived. She couldn't figure out why the Atlantic Ocean could be grey up north but such a pretty blue in Florida. The Gulf of Mexico beaches do have that white sand and azure blue water.

Cousins of ours who visited California when her hubby had R&R during the Viet Nam War era........said things pretty similar to what you are saying..........plus were amazed at the rocky cliffs above some of the ocean front. (which we've now seen in Maine, but as a younger person only knew the flat beaches of the Jersey shore).

So, I think you are right that the east coast beaches vs. west coast beaches are different. Our son's wife has family in the LaJolla (San Diego) area of CA. so those grandchildren of ours will get to see both types of beach.....Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.........and do already.