My husband and I couldn’t afford a home in the DC suburbs. We moved to the Chesapeake Bay and never looked back.

My husband and I welcomed our second daughter in November 2012 and started house-hunting for a bigger space shortly after. Our townhouse in the DC suburbs was great for three, but would become cramped with our growing family.

However, even with two full-time incomes coming in from me and my husband, we couldn’t find a house in the DC area within our budget of $430,000 that didn’t need major repairs. One house we toured looked like the kitchen had been engulfed in flames and left untouched.

At this point, in the winter of 2013, we started considering moving outside the DC area.

I worried about moving away from my friends, losing access to all the conveniences, shops, and international cuisines, and moving to a place with likely less diversity.

However, my husband’s friend suggested visiting Calvert County, located on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, and after checking it out, we were instantly sold. What I was leaving behind didn’t seem to matter as much after that.

We were charmed by the Chesapeake Beach, Maryland

My husband found the house we ended up buying and visited the area by himself before we took the rest of the family. One family visit is all we needed to decide this would be our new home.

The 4,000-square-foot house had plenty of space for our family to grow. I finally had a place to put my mother’s piano, which I’d inherited, so our kids could take lessons on the one my siblings and I learned on.

The house came with a beautiful sun-filled kitchen, was one mile from the Chesapeake Bay in an area with a good school system, and, best of all, was within our budget. (The housing market here has since gone up, and prices are much higher.)

We found a community

Soon after selling our townhouse and buying the house in Chesapeake Beach, our new neighbors stopped by to welcome us and bring hot meals, candles, and kitchen towels.

This never happened anywhere we’d lived before. We were good friends with our neighbors in the DC suburbs, but our neighbors in Chesapeake Beach feel like family.

We shuttle each other’s kids to and from practices, go on trips together, and I know I can count on them when I’m short on butter.

We’re truly grateful to be part of this community, especially since we do not have family who lives close by.

I feel like I’m reliving the best part of my childhood

My favorite places are beaches. I grew up in Cape May, New Jersey, one of the country’s oldest seaside towns, known for its local seafood, pork roll and egg sandwiches, and Jersey tomatoes.

So, anytime I’m at the beach, any beach, I return to the best parts of my childhood. Luckily, there’s a tiny beach just a mile from our house.

In Chesapeake Beach, we paddleboard and collect fossilized shark teeth, which this area is known for. A local man is famous for discovering a Megalodon tooth when he was fishing at a nearby beach, which is estimated to be millions of years old.

For me, paddleboarding takes courage and balance, and it’s taught me to be more patient with myself. My kids, though, have gotten pretty good on the water. I’m grateful that I get to raise them with a similar love of sand and sun.

I also discovered a new love of cracking crabs. Maryland is known for its seafood, especially blue crabs and oysters. On summer weekends, I spend time with friends dipping the Old Bay-seasoned crab meat in melted butter and apple cider vinegar. It’s always an afternoon well spent.

We’ve now lived here as long as we lived in the DC suburbs, and while I occasionally miss some of the conveniences we used to enjoy, the trade-off has been worth it. We have no plans to move anytime soon.

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