I’m re-reading the “Little House” series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Those girls went well into adulthood without ever seeing an ocean beach.
If you were beyond childhood when you first saw the ocean, how did you feel? Were you scared? Overjoyed? Did you go for a swim or try to bodysurf? Did you understand how the tides change?
Lesse…it was too cold when I was born, so my folks probably first took me when I was three or four months old. 'Course, it helps that I was raised all of 10 minutes away from the beach.
I’ve never seen it before - 24. Someday.
I find it really strange to think what it must be like to not know what the sea looks like - but I guess that’s because it’s impossible to be further than 70 miles from it in Britain.
I think I was around five when my father took me to the Gulf Coast to go fishing.
As I recall, my immediate response was, “Holy shat, that’s a lot of water.”
Living only 20 miles from the Atlantic, I saw the ocean first when I was probably 5 or 6.
I was 19 when I first saw the ocean. Gulf of Mexico off Galveston Island. I was a lil awestruck until I saw the oil platform. Then I didn’t know what to think.
I grew up maybe a quarter-mile from the shore of Lake Michigan, which besides the lack of tides is close enough to an ocean. Water as far as the eye can see in all directions, very cold water, big waves, can’t see across it (well, except in very certain locations). I first saw the ocean in my early teens, and didn’t see much difference between it and Lake Michigan, from a person’s perspective standing and looking at it.
I grew up in Baltimore County, and I know my folks took us on day trips to Ocean City when I was a pre-teen - maybe 7 or 8. We didn’t stay overnight at the ocean till I was in high school, and then it was just for a long weekend. With 5 kids, vacations were a bit out of the budget.
First time I saw the Pacific was in 1974 when I was stationed at NAS North Island, San Diego.
But if you take “ocean” to mean a literal ocean then you have to go to Cornwall for the Atlantic and my answer would be 11. And yes i did try surfing.
I really hope nobody would try to argue this seriously - that would rule out the Mediterranean and much of the Caribbean. And anyway, I still was in the Atlantic as a baby 
I was 5 or 6 when my folks rented a beachfront house in Hollywood Beach (near Ft. Lauderdale, Florida,) for a week at Christmas. I don’t remember much of it, but I remember the taste of the water, and I remember I got stung by a Portugeuse Man-o-war.
My earliest memories are of family beach holidays when I was about 5 or 6.
I was about a year old when I first saw it, and the last time I saw the ocean was about 11 years ago.
Damn I miss it. I may live in the prairies (and have my whole life), but I love the ocean. I want to go back and just lay on the beach for a bit, or try and build a sand castle below the tide line as the water comes in (that’s just fun).
I figure it has to have “ocean” in it’s name to qualify as an ocean. I’ve seen a large body of water known as the Gulf of Mexico when I was around 4 and then a few years later we lived near that body of water and I have been near there ever since.
However as “oceans” go, I didn’t see the Atlantic until I was around 22 even though I only lived a few hours away. I still haven’t seen the Pacific or any of the others.
I was raised in a tiny village by the sea so I saw the ocean as soon as my eyes could make it out–I feel awful (like claustrophobic but different, somehow) if I don’t see the ocean and prefferably a mountain.
:eek:
I had been thinking of posting the same question and it’s really interesting to see people’s responses here; I can’t imagine what it’s like not having seen the ocean as it’s such a huge part of life here.
Before Cornwall, I’d only been to the South Coast and Kent – is it all the English Channel down to Plymouth? Anyhow my folks made a big deal out of the sea being the ocean off Cornwall and the waves were bigger, and more dangerous (red flags and you couldn’t swim at certain times of day) and there was surfing!
I would say the Meditteranean is nowt but a girt big pond had I not once been in a truly terrifying storm off Italy, but the ocean it is not.
I live in Montreal.
Saw the Atlantic at age 10 when my family went to Florida on vacation.
Saw the Pacific at age 21 on a vulcanology field trip to Oregon and Washington.
I didn’t like the Atlantic much. Well, I suppose it’s more that I didn’t like the beach. I remember the moment I got hit in the face with a big wave and realized just how salty salt water is. Sunrise over the ocean was wonderful, as was the incredible lightning storm over the ocean in the middle of the night.
The Pacific was different for me, maybe because I was older. I remember my first glimpse. We were camping in a national park in Oregon, and we left our site in the middle of the night to wander around the sand dunes with flashlights and find the ocean. When we got there we sat on the beach until sunrise. It was a foggy misty morning, and we could jusy barely see the waves through the fog. It was beautiful.
I was 2 or 3 - my grandmother had a place on Nantucket Island when I was a runt. We probably were routinely visiting the shores of Lake Erie (Euclid Beach, Mentor-on-the-Lake, etc.) before that, but I really don’t think of the great lakes as the ocean. And I wouldn’t remember any farther back anyway…
3 months. My New England-bred parents were stationed in Missouri when I was born, but moved back east to York, ME when I was 3 months old. I’ve lived the whole rest of my life within a quarter mile of the Atlantic.
