i'll vote for fire island, n.y. gotravel...the water usually warms up by august. :-)

Siesta Key again! The sand was voted #1 by Travel Channel a few seasons ago. It is like baby powder! We love it there and the turist stuff is available nearby if you feel you must do it!

Thanks for all your input. We are traveling out west next summer. Actually to Olympic Nat'l forest. Has anyone been to Kiawah?

lisa...have you been to Ocracoke Island on the Outer Banks of NC?If not,I would highly recommend it.Very quiant place.:)

Little Corona Beach in Corona del Mar, CA. My house overlooks it, the tide pools are fun, the kids love it, the waves put me to sleep at night. Bliss.

Been going to Kiawah at least annually for almost 30 years and love it. Wide beaches at low tide, very warm water in the summer. Hard pack sand that you can ride bikes on. Weekly activities scheduled for kids/families at Night Heron Park - many free. Some notes: water is not 'caribbean' clear because of the nearby saltwater marshes. A plus, rip tides have not been as big an issue here as they are elsewhere on the east coast.

I'll just mention the Brunswick Islands (NC) which covers, Oak Island, Holden Beach, Ocean Isle & the afore-mentioned Sunset Beach. I favor Holden as it is the least crowded of the group.

thanks again for all your help. I have just returned from an all girls week in Florida and have decided that this is not the place for us to return as a family. We are looking into the Outerbanks. I realize it's July so it will probably be slim pickins.

Ocean City, MD
VA Beach, VA

Lisa,

I don't mean this in a mean way, but you started off this thread by saying you had already been to the Outer Banks and then asking specifically about Kiawah.

You got lots of great suggestions! And you got some very accurate information about Kiawah specifically. Don't let those good suggestions die on the vine--try one! Lots of us will want to live vicariously through your vacation when you return and write a trip report. (You are going to write a trip report aren't you?) :-)

One note about the publicized "best beaches" list: It's sort of bogus. Here's why:

If a beach makes the list one year, it's ineligible the next, so that every year they have a new list of the 10 "best" beaches.

You can see that after a few years, you're down to maybe the 30th "best" beach but it could appear as #1 on that year's list.