I could have my feet in the ocean within a 5-6 minute walk from the house. But that would be Cannery Row. If I wanted beach, it’d probably be more like a 15 minute walk.
As the crow flies, maybe half a mile. If you wanted to drive there, you would have to drive out of my neighborhood and then around to the beach so it would be a two mile drive or so.
Standing at the beach, this photo shows the little hill up to my house. The streetlight is at the far end of the property.
Ooh, pictures! How about a Google satellite photo of where I live?
A long, long way. I live in pretty much the geographic middle of North America.
Currently, about fifteen miles from the Tasman Sea (or South Pacific Ocean, depending on which map you use) as the fly crows.
However, I’m a working class statistic of Australia’s insane property prices, and I keep getting pushed west. I grew up with the sound of waves breaking at night. Closest I’ve lived would have been about 400 feet from Bondi Beach.
Rough, ain’t it? Especially with all these folks just a stone’s throw away from it.
Just for giggles, when you want to be “near the water” or “on it” what’s your body of water of choice?
We have a decent river nearby, but it’s just for boating. The only way I’d get in it is if the boat sank.
Okay. 
It does suck - I love the ocean and want to live by it someday. After I get my degree (2 more years) I plan on moving.
I live very close to a nice river. Nice sandy shores and no jellyfish! Too bad it is frozen half the time, and very cold except for maybe three months out of the year. It is very scenic, though.
That looks nice. How are housing prices? I have a friend retiring from the military soon and she’s thinking about the northwest US.
Boscibo, is that the Mississippi? I used to live right across the river, in the Twin Cities.
The St. Croix on the Mn/Wi border - you were close!
Housing prices are modest, but rising. My house is worth about twice what it was when I bought it in late-2003. It’s about three and a half times more than my friend (from whom I bought it) paid for it in 2001. A friend bought a small cabin (2BR, 750 sq. ft.) on the corner of Birch Bay - Lynden Rd and Harborview for $70k and sold it two years later for $133k. $250,000 or less should get your friend a nice three-bedroom.
But jobs may be hard to find. (At least, for data analysts, like me; hence my current exile.) Bellingham is about 20 miles down the freeway (easy drive). There seems to be enough retail jobs. There’s also TSA, which may suit your friend since she’s coming out of the military. There’s also the BP refinery. Check out the jobs in The Bellingham Herald or one of the online job sites (e.g., Monster).
The climate is generally good, though it does get cold in the winter. (This, coming from a SoCal native.) There are lots of outdoor activities such as fishing (salmon and other fish, dungeness crab, red rock crab, oysters, clams, shrimp, etc.), bicycling, canoeing, kayaking, running (check out the Ski-to-Sea race), hiking, and camping. Vancouver, BC rocks, and is only 35 miles from my house. Bellingham has a couple of good restaurants. People seem to like the Semiahmoo Resort. It seems to be a good place to bring up kids.
Two blocks from the Atlantic.
Thanks for the info, Johnny L.A. I passed it on to her. It sounds like a place I wouldn’t mind living in.
Yup, seafood & running. Perfect for me. Monterey is kinda coolish-cold all year 'round. I could handle a colder winter if it were off-set by a warmer summer.
inspired by this thread, I’ve posted an inquiry to help me figure out how far I am from a coast: Is there a web-site to calculate the distance between two locations?
I was fifty miles from the Pacific earlier this year but am currently ~500 from both the Gulf and Atlantic.
Right - using this handy web-page, Surface Distance between points of Latitude and Longitude, I’ve determined that the closest coast to me, Hudson Bay, is about 1150 km / 715 miles away. However, it’s not accessible by road, so if you want it to be a coast I can get to by car, the closest coast going the other way would be the Pacific, 1326 km / 824 miles.
Hey, cool. I didn’t know Google Earth measures stuff.
me:
~800 miles to Hudson Bay (if that counts)
~950 miles to the closest spot on the east coast (Chesapeake Bay)
~1000 miles to the closest spot on closest spot on the Gulf of Mexico
~1500 miles to the closest spot on the west coast
So yeah, any coast is a way off from me. 
That’s a righteous website. Good find. I’m bookmarking it.
I should have said ‘$250,000 more or less’. BTW: there are plenty of more expensive houses as well. Seven figures. There are a lot of nice houses ‘in the county’, as they say, because land is relatively inexpensive.
Summers are pleasant. Scotticher said that it was in the 90s in Bellingham a couple of weeks ago. The highest temperature I saw online for Blaine was in the mid-'80s. I never needed a/c. Fans suffice, though on the hottest days just barely. Last winter it snowed for like three days at my place. The year before there was more snow, and cold enough that I saw ice in Drayton Harbor (around the edges). And it does, in fact, rain a bit. (I’ve been warned by Whatcom County natives not to divulge the actual amount. 
)