Kirbie's Cravings

Summer Beach Packing Tips and a Giveaway

overhead photo of different items for the beach

This post is brought to you by Fisher Nut Exactly snack bites. Stay tuned through the end of the post for a chance to win a bag of Fisher Nut Exactly Snack bites and a $50 Costco gift card (membership not required for use)!

I hope everyone has a great July 4th weekend. I thought I’d kick things off with a giveaway and some beach packing tips.
photo of the beach and ocean
One of the reasons I love living in San Diego is that we are so close to the ocean. July 4th is usually our first beach trip of the summer. I know things get really crowded there during the holiday weekend, but it’s become a tradition. We usually go in the late afternoon and stay through the fireworks.

We try to keep things light and simple for our beach trips: cooler, sunscreen, reading material, towels, umbrella, napkins, easy-to-eat snacks, and sunglasses. Here are a few of my beach packing tips:

1. Keep it light. With the beaches super crowded, parking can be hard to find and it’s not fun to lug a ton of things around. We have a cooler with wheels and we try to pack only the essentials.

2. Hydrate. It can be easy to develop heat stroke without even realizing it when you’re out during the summer. We’ve both had it before, so I’m always extra careful and make sure that we are constantly sipping water. I fill my cooler with bottles of water and coconut water.

3. Sunscreen and Shade. We have a beach umbrella so we’re not under the sun the entire time. I also pack sunscreen. I always make sure we apply it before we arrive the beach and then again after a few hours. I’ve recently began using the spray-on ones as it’s a lot easier and less messy to work with.

4. Bite-sized snacks. I also try to make sure our snacks are bite-sized and easy to consume. I learned the hard way that dips and stuff are not so fun when they get sand in them. We recently tried the new Almond Blueberry dipped in Dark Chocolate variety of Fisher Nut Exactly snack bites. They just became available at Costcos in San Diego! And if you’re not in San Diego, you can check out the full list of places you can find them on their website.
photo of a bag of nut exactly snack bites
We always love trying new snacks, so it was definitely fun to try these out. And I have to say, they are addicting. It was hard to keep them away from Mr. K long enough so I could save them for our beach trip. They basically have everything I crave in a snack, all rolled up into one perfect round bite. Fruit? Check? Crunch? Check. Chocolate? Check!

close-up photo of the snack bites

The bites consist of a combination of roasted almonds, blueberries, pumpkin seeds and whole grain popcorn, rolled together and dipped in dark chocolate. They are sweet, salty, crunchy and fulfills all my snack cravings.

5. Extra towels. We always try to pack a few extra towels so that we have plenty to spread out and also separate ones for when we take a dip in the water.

6. Avoid peak hours. Okay, this isn’t really a packing tip as it is a general beach going trip, but it’s what we’ve done the last few years to not go crazy with frustration with the holiday crowd. We usually will go super early or late. We’ve found that people generally start leaving around 3 or 4 PM, so we tend to go later in the afternoon as the crowd starts to leave. There are still plenty of daylight hours left and we get to watch the sunset too.

Now onto the giveaway. One lucky reader will win a 20 oz bag of Fisher Nut Exactly snack bites in the Almond Blueberry dipped in Dark Chocolate variety and a $50 Costco gift card (which can be used without membership). To enter, please follow the prompts in the PromoSimple box. Giveaway runs until Saturday July 11, 2015 at 11:59 PM PST. Good luck!

As indicated above, this post is sponsored by Fisher Nut Exactly. All opinions expressed are my own.

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2 comments on “Summer Beach Packing Tips and a Giveaway”

  1. I usually freeze at least some of the water bottles (remove some water so the ice doesn’t expand and crack the bottle) so they provide both the ice to cool lunch/snacks and the cold water for the afternoon.