About BeachyThings

We're the Burge family — and we simply love the beach. Based in Northern Virginia, we've spent years chasing coastlines, but our hearts always find their way back to one place: Sandbridge, tucked away at the quiet southern end of Virginia Beach, where the crowds thin out and the days stretch long and easy.

You'll find us there most summers — Ryan manning the smoker with a rack of slow-cooked ribs, then pivoting to a crab and shrimp boil that somehow gets better every year, while Maghan keeps the whole operation running — rounding up the kids, organizing the games, making sure everyone has what they need and nobody's lost a flip flop. On the way in each visit, Maghan always makes sure they stop at Bay Breeze Farms to pick up whatever's fresh — strawberries most of all. It's become as much a part of the Sandbridge ritual as unpacking the cooler. When the sun starts to dip we'll load up the bikes and cruise the neighborhood roads with no particular destination, salt still in our hair, usually ending up at a local ice cream spot or grabbing a table at Margie & Ray's.

The kids have each carved out their own relationship with the ocean. Hayden is a natural explorer — always crouched at the water's edge turning over rocks, hunting for small crabs, holding up shells to the light. Kenneth is a builder — he'll spend an entire afternoon digging enormous holes and constructing things that look impressively engineered right up until Jess tears through them. Because Jess, the youngest, is a force of nature. He wants to go further out, always. He has exactly zero interest in slowing down.

We've been lucky enough to take that feeling further afield too — most recently to Belize, which checked every box. River tubing through the jungle, reef snorkeling over systems that made us feel like we were the first people to ever see them, long lazy afternoons on the nearby islands, and yes — the rum punch was cold and entirely too easy to keep ordering. Every trip leaves us with a longer list of places to go next and a deeper appreciation for how much of the world is still best experienced from a beach towel.

BeachyThings started because we kept getting asked the same questions by friends and family — where should we go, what should we pack, is it worth it, what's the best cooler? We figured if we were going to answer those questions anyway, we might as well build something useful out of it. So here we are.