This place is pure magic. The magic is not produced by a wand, but by people--good people. Okay,…read moreand ponies and puppies. But mostly by people. There was some brief confusion when I booked the reservation. I had not realized it was a "horse hotel" with multiple stalls and also campsites as well as rooms. My disappointment was replaced by pure joy upon learning that humans can stay here too, as well as hybridized beings like myself (a centaur)!
Everything here is done the old fashioned way, the right way: with kindness, trust, love and simplicity. Staying here will make your heart ache for a simpler time when folks were able to conduct business with a handshake, where their first priority was just treating each other how they want to be treated themselves, with dignity and decency.
We came here almost my accident. I'll be honest. Ocean Acres was not in my first, second--or even top five--picks of places to go. We were aiming at much further up the coast. I could find almost nothing and what I could find was neither affordable nor desirable. We did not want to go to some sterile resort where you exist to be milked and sent on your way. We wanted to be in a place that was family-owned and served a purpose beyond just making money as efficiently as possible. We wanted to be somewhere that had actual personality, not just a hollow façade with a minimal, lazy attempt to lure visitors and nothing else. Ocean Acres Horse Hotel was--is--the jackpot on all accounts.
Because of a recent death of a family member after a prolonged illness, it was important to be in a place with healing energy. I had a good feeling the moment I navigated my way to Ocean Acres' minimalist website and saw they have no automated process for automated or online bookings. Everything is done personally, over the phone. The owner, Carol did not even ask for my last name, the make of my vehicle or a credit card to reserve the room. She asked us to pay in cash when we arrived. When we did arrive, the first thing I did was try to pay, but she insisted we wait until morning to do so! She wanted us to be able to settle in, relax, and get a good night's sleep first.
WHAT?!
My thought was: who the hell are you and what time period do you hail from? Where is your time machine? Such a small gesture, but to be endowed with that level of trust by a stranger doing business with me...I cannot think of another time in my 46 years that that's happened. Again, you may think I am making too much of it, but being shown such trust and kindness so quickly had an immediate healing effect on us.
It is impossible to discuss Ocean Acres without talking about Carol and her husband, the owners. I don't know how they do it. I could barely keep up with all the adventures they shared with us. Carol is a polymath of the first rank. Her amazing breakfasts held us in good stead the entire time we were there. We ate with the other guests--sometimes sharing a table--in their family dining room! Whilst cooking up innovative and astounding savory and sweet detectibles, Carol regaled us with stories about her life, her work, her relationship to horses, the wheeling and dealing required to get hay. We were also surrounded by her work--stunning oil portraits and bronze sculpture, for which she had rightly won awards.
Carol and her husband knew we were hurting, and they pulled out all the stops to help us. They lent us their own, personal ebikes (which were so much fun to take on country roads, tooling around cranberry bogs, little ponds and abandoned farmsteads), Her cooking was phenomenal. She knew we loved animals but had none of our own, so she introduced us to their collie dog Price, with whom we quickly became BFF's in a neverending game of fetch, told us what foods her mini-pony (or was it a mini-donkey?) likes to be fed. And of course, there were other people and their beautiful steeds all around. Just being in the presence of so many happy critters and people had a very good effect on us; it was so needed.
The property begins at the highway, off which a short, paved driveway leads to and terminates behind the main house, where the owners live and some of the rooms are. Then, a dirt road goes straight back (west) about a mile--all the way to the sea--passing by a beautiful barn, stalls, campsites, forest, meadows, a pond and other bucolic scenes on the way. Strolling the road on the property (and biking on it) was one of my favorite things to do there.
If you ever pined for things (and people) with a personal touch, if you ever just wanted to drop out of the game and NOT be treated like a number, a walking phat money bag with a dollar sign over your head, if you miss interacting like a regular human with other regular humans, if you ever needed some puppy time but had no puppy of your own, if you ever wanted to feel safe, breathe in serenity like it floated in the ethers, if you ever just wanted a really damn good breakfast...Ocean Acres is THE place for you.