The kids talked about it like it was heaven. Even many older folks here in the Shenandoah Valley like to head off in the summer vacation season for the sand, sun and cooling ocean breezes.

Myself, I'll take the mountains anytime. There are good reasons for my distaste for seaside resorts, reasons gathered over nearly 40 years of vacations which have, too often, included a week or two at the beach.

For many years, the favorite family vacation spot – theirs, not mine – was the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Of course, there are many attractions there – miles and miles of secluded white sands, terrific fishing, lighthouses and shipwrecks silently whispering a romantic history of man and the sea.

But I couldn't seem to get over the less attractive aspects.

Take the wind – please. Just south of where the Wright Brothers flew the first heavier-than-air vehicle it seemed the wind never stopped blowing. I think Wilbur and Orville could have made it airborne if they had just stretched a nylon frame over their bodies. In fact, nutty modern visitors to Kill Devil Hills parasailed all the time off the towering sand dunes.

Further down the Banks, if you went out to lie on the beach anytime around midday, the ocean breeze gusted at about 80 miles an hour, plowing sand into any exposed, salted and parched skin about a quarter of an inch deep.

Whenever we made those beach jaunts years ago, I didn't get a very good tan. I reddened to the hue of a well-boiled beet. But the gale force zephyrs of the North Carolina shore usually sanded down to skin level any moles or other blemishes by the time I escaped back to the air-conditioned comfort of our rental unit.

Oh, yes. The rental unit. The brochure made it sound like St. Simeon by the Sea. But the reality was not quite so palatial – or palatable. There was often a greenish gray mold growing on the bedroom walls, the air conditioners chugged and roared in an attempt to lower the room temperature to 83 degrees and the furniture looked like some stuff we sold years earlier in a yard sale.

And then there were the mosquitoes. They are legendary and live up to their fabled reputations. No one – but no one – dared step outside at dusk without a heavy, greasy coating of repellent, which felt a little uncomfortable atop a sandblasted sunburn and a layer of some equally oily healing balm.

The natives along the Banks told stories about small children being carried away by these giant flying insects. And after a few visits I believed them.

Once the sun went down, there was, of course, the nighttime entertainment. That consisted of the movie running at the Avon theater, a 1963 epic that ran all summer long.

In the daytime, the National Park Service tried their darnedest to offer something to do besides being blown around the beach or swamped by 18-foot-high waves. On one of their brochures, they advertised this intriguing activity: "Boogie with a Ranger." It sounded slightly risque – particularly when you discovered that several of the rangers were shapely young women in khaki shorts. However, further inquiry disclosed that "boogie" referred to heading out to the windswept beach and learning which waves will kill you and which ones won't.

Another factor caused me to wonder why we returned so often to the Outer Banks: Outside of the ocean, the place was dry. That is, there were no sales of alcohol from Buxton north to Nag's Head. So if you were thirsty for something besides Gator Ade or Dr. Pepper and you were stuck in Avon or Salvo, you had to travel several miles to wait interminably in line at a tiny beer-and-fishing-tackle store.

The Outer Banks of North Carolina are, indeed, a great vacation destination if you like to fish, enjoy relatively unspoiled beachfront nature and can find a fairly nice cottage with working air conditioning and a well-stocked refrigerator.

However, for me, it's the mountains anytime.