When in history has “how is your wifi” been so important for being able to just get away from it all for a while? While we aren’t flying anywhere for fun and it’s too tough to cross the border to see family, sometimes just changing our scenery while the kids are schooling from home is the only way we can keep our sanity. So for now we schoolcation and since we had a great time in Seabrook this summer, we rebooked a week on the Washington coast in Seabrook so we could beach a little during the kids’ school recesses. We picked the Big Wheel Beach house because it seemed like a great home base for our family.
The Big Wheel Beach house is a dog-friendly rental in Seabrook
Seabrook has become very popular recently (it seems like many other families are looking to schoolcation too) so if you are looking for a specific beach house it’s better to book as soon as you can. We really loved our summer stay at dog-friendly Ocean Tails but it was booked up for our last trip so we needed another dog-friendly rental. Thankfully Big Wheel Beachhouse was available and it was a comfortable place to stay with kids and a dog. The location was very central to the village area as well as the beach so our daily walks were fun excuses to explore. And our little Scout really liked the back door window where he could watch people walk up and down the alley.
Big Wheel Beachhouse has a lot of family-friendly amenities
The garage at this beach house is stocked with things like a ping pong table and lots of bikes. We brought our own bikes on this trip but it also ended up being extremely stormy while we visited so we even lost power for a short time. The ping pong table in the covered garage kept our kids entertained while we had no power and this was an unexpected bonus.
The shower outside near the hot tub was a great amenity for when we got back from the beach and it had hot water too. And the hot tub was a lovely place to warm up after a cold, wet beach adventure. We didn’t pack a ton of clothes because we knew there was a washer and dryer but we found out when we got there that the washer was broken. The nice thing about Seabrook is that there is a vacation office and they helped us get our clothes cleaned- having a washer and dryer at a place like this is so helpful with kids and a dog in tow.
The Big Wheel Beach house also has a convenient in-town location. If you head out the back door, the Red Velvet Bakery and coffee shop is barely a two minute walk and if you head out the front door, Koko’s and the Front Street Market are also only two minutes away as well. From the front steps and the upstairs porch there is a bit of a beach view too which makes it really feel like you are on a vacation.
And the Schoolcation situation?
One of the biggest reasons why we booked this rental was that it had a little glass office room that we thought would be a good place for one of the kids to work. If you are traveling with younger kids, this would also be a great play area and we noticed that it had a lot of toys and games in it as well. My other guy really liked a nook off the kitchen that we didn’t realize existed when we booked-it even had a desk and chair. There were also 3 bedrooms upstairs and a fabulous patio outside that made us feel like we had a lot of space. I was worried about not having enough internet connection, but even with 4 computers and 4 phones on the wifi network, it worked completely fine.
And how did we ‘recess’ at Seabrook?
With completely online school the kids feel like they are very isolated from friends and because our family is in Canada we are isolated from them too. And being home day after day starts to remind us of everything we used to do in our old lives. But even just being about 3 hours from home in a different location, the guys said they felt less lonely because this was a break from their regular routines. We took walks to the beach between classes. And there are a ton of biking trails in Seabrook so we made sure to get out and ride those too. The coolest thing about this schoolcation was that we didn’t need to get into our car once during the whole trip either. I don’t know of many other locations near Seattle that would be as perfect for helping us to keep our school and work routines while being self-contained away from home.
Are you looking for places to Schoolcation with kids too? If you’ve found a cool place to visit with great wifi I’d love to hear!
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)