The Best Vacation by Jenna Kutz

            "Guys, look. Do you see that shimmering line? That's the ocean!" called my dad. I stared excitedly ahead to where he pointed. I couldn't believe that after seven long hours, we were finally finished driving.

Ten minutes later we found a parking space in the garage and rode the elevator up to our condo. "Wow," we all breathed when Dad opened the door.

"You can see the ocean!" shouted my little brother, Josh.

I rode back down to the parking garage with Dad, my older sister, Whitney, and my older brother, Ryan, to unload the van. We all carried as much as we could and three elevator rides later, we finished.

"Why don't we walk down the pier to a burger place called Ruby's?" suggested Dad. So we did, stopping a couple times along the way to watch the surfers and talking and laughing.

That night I fell asleep quickly, exhausted from the long drive and the walk down the pier.The next morning, we hurried into our swimsuits, splattered on sunscreen, and raced down to the water.

"Ooooh, it's cold!" said my younger sister, Faith.

"Freezing!" Hannah, another little sister, added. I nodded. I couldn't have been in the water for more then a minute and my legs already felt numb.

“Jenna, get your boogie-board and come here!" called Dad. I grabbed my boogie-board and splashed back into the water. "Here, hold your board like this and when a good wave comes, get on and paddle as hard as you can, okay?" I nodded.

"Here comes a good one. Get ready!" said Dad. I waited until the wave came closer, then jumped on my board and started paddling. The wave picked me up and carried me to shore.

"I did it!" I shouted, jumping up. Dad gave me a thumbs-up. I grinned and waded back in. This was fun.

A few hours later, we headed back to our condo, all wet and sandy. My legs hurt from the rocks that had been everywhere. I had a really long scrape on one of my legs from one of the times I fell off my boogie-board.

The next morning we went to a different beach that our waiter at Denny's had suggested to us. It was sandier and the waves were way better. The only thing I did was boogie-board.

Later while taking a shower the lights flickered and went out. I quickly finished and got dressed. "What happened?" I asked my mom. She didn't know. Neither did anyone else. Finally, we found out that there had been a huge power-outage and the lights weren't supposed to come on until late that night, maybe even the next morning.

"This is scary," whispered Holly, my little sister, once it got dark. I didn't say anything, but I agreed with her. I could hardly see anything. The lights came back on at 9:00 PM. I was happy that the outage hadn't lasted for as long as we expected.

The next day we went to the same beach that we had gone to the day before. I went boogie-boarding again and we met up with friends from Virginia. We stayed the whole day and had tons of fun.

The next morning, we all helped load up the van and went for one last walk on the pier. Halfway down the pier a guy talking on the phone passed us. "Yeah, there's a school of sharks . . . must be eight feet or so!" He shouted into the phone.

I glanced at Whitney and could tell that she was thinking the same thing as me. Sharks? Here? "Let's go check it out," said Dad. We hurried to the end of the pier. Sure enough, there were two sharks laying there.

"Whoa," I gasped. The fishermen started shouting and another shark, bigger then the first two, was hauled up onto the pier.

"They're catching sharks." Noelle, Holly's twin, stated simply. I nodded. No matter how many awesome vacations I'd go on, I'll always remember this one. This was the best vacation.

First Autobiographical Incident