Lake Erie and Atlantic beach trips we reserve from Akron
Our office plans Lake Erie and Atlantic beach trips for travelers who like to reach the sand by car. Every stay is at a hotel, motel or resort hotel that runs its own front desk, and we ask that desk to hold a room in your name once you say yes in writing.
Thirteen stays sit in the catalog: five on Lake Erie in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and eight on the Atlantic from New Jersey to North Carolina. Below you can see what each shore is like, which way the beaches face and how long the drive takes, before you choose one in the full stay catalog.
Five Lake Erie stays close to Akron
Geneva-on-the-Lake is Ohio's old summer resort strip in Ashtabula County, where the lake sits below a low bluff, the beach is narrow sand and flat stones, and the Grand River Valley wineries lie inland. Huron sits at the mouth of the Huron River with Nickel Plate Beach for the town, and the resort hotel in our stay keeps its own lakefront grounds west of town.
Port Clinton, at the mouth of the Portage River, gives you a motel on its own strip of private sand plus a public beach by the downtown waterfront. Lakeside is a gated summer community on the Marblehead Peninsula with a long lakefront park, a dock, and summer lectures and concerts; the hotel package there includes two adult four-day gate passes and South Gate car parking.
Erie, Pennsylvania, looks out on Presque Isle Bay, which a long curved sand peninsula shelters from the open lake. The hotel stands on the bayfront in town, and the peninsula's beaches are a short drive away on the lake side. Most lake stays run 2 nights; the Lakeside stay is 4 midweek nights.
Eight Atlantic stays, New Jersey to North Carolina
Three stays sit in Cape May County, New Jersey. Cape May, at the state's southern tip, is known for its Victorian houses and asks for beach tags from anyone 12 and older ($10 a day, $25 a week in 2026). Wildwood Crest has very wide, flat beaches, 1950s and 1960s motels and no beach tags, while Ocean City, a family town where no alcohol is sold, charges $10 a day or $20 a week for tags.
Farther south, Rehoboth Beach in Delaware has a boardwalk and a free town beach, with street meters at $4 an hour from May 15 to September 15. Ocean City, Maryland, stretches about ten miles of free beach along a barrier island, with the boardwalk at the south end and our motel on the ocean block.
Chincoteague is an island town on Virginia's Eastern Shore; its beach lies across a short causeway on Assateague, inside a national wildlife refuge that charges a vehicle pass of $10 a day or $25 a week, and the wild ponies live there too. Virginia Beach has a boardwalk of about three miles and city lots at $2 an hour, and Nags Head on the Outer Banks has tall dunes with free beach access.
OpenStreetMap shorelines and the July sun
For every beach, the office measured the direction the shoreline faces, using OpenStreetMap shoreline data, and where the sun rises and sets on July 15 at that latitude. A sunrise or sunset counts as over the water when it falls within 90 degrees of straight out from the sand.
That gives three groups. Geneva-on-the-Lake and Lakeside come first because the summer sun sets over the lake; nine stays follow where it rises over the water, with Huron, Erie and Port Clinton among them; Chincoteague and Cape May close the list because the sun stays along the shore. Within each group, the more squarely the sun sits in front of you, the earlier the stay appears in the table below.
| Town | Water | Faces | July sun | Drive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Geneva-on-the-Lake, OH | Lake Erie | 347° NNW | The sun sets over the water | 76 mi |
| Lakeside, OH | Lake Erie | 355° N | The sun sets over the water | 98 mi |
| Nags Head, NC | the Atlantic | 64° ENE | The sun rises over the water | 589 mi |
| Virginia Beach, VA | the Atlantic | 77° ENE | The sun rises over the water | 520 mi |
| Rehoboth Beach, DE | the Atlantic | 82° E | The sun rises over the water | 455 mi |
| Ocean City, MD | the Atlantic | 104° ESE | The sun rises over the water | 470 mi |
| Huron, OH | Lake Erie | 11° N | The sun rises over the water | 76 mi |
| Erie, PA | Presque Isle Bay, Lake Erie | 8° N | The sun rises over the water | 125 mi |
| Port Clinton, OH | Lake Erie | 9° N | The sun rises over the water | 96 mi |
| Wildwood Crest, NJ | the Atlantic | 140° SE | The sun rises over the water | 491 mi |
| Ocean City, NJ | the Atlantic | 146° SE | The sun rises over the water | 474 mi |
| Chincoteague, VA | the Atlantic at Assateague | 155° SSE | The sun stays along the shore | 502 mi |
| Cape May, NJ | the Atlantic | 164° SSE | The sun stays along the shore | 493 mi |
Miles from Akron and nights per stay
Lake Erie stays sit close, from 1 hr 37 min to Huron to about 2 hr 31 min to Erie without traffic. The Atlantic takes a long day in the car, from about 9 hr 1 min to Ocean City, New Jersey, to over 12 hours to Nags Head. Real drives take longer than these computed times. That is why lake stays are mostly 2 nights and ocean stays 3 or 4.
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