Dear Vacationer,

First of all, welcome to the shore. We pride ourselves on maintaining the natural beauty of this place, and we work hard every offseason to make it even more beautiful for you all. After all, you are the reason why our island continues to thrive. During the season, you keep our family-owned and small businesses alive, and we cannot thank you enough for that.

However, as a local, I must ask something of you. It’s not an unfathomable request, but it is extremely important. Please, please respect this place and the people that live in it. This is your vacation destination, but it is our home. It hurts us to see it destroyed by those that we welcomed with open arms. We have opened our home up to you, the very least you could do is wipe your shoes before walking in.

It pains me that I even have to ask you for respect and courtesy, because it should just be given. Recently there has been a lot of tension between locals and vacationers, and there really is no reason that we can’t just get along.

The only thing we ask of you is that you keep our home clean and respect its beautiful existence. We have grown up here, learned to take our first steps on these beaches, and will someday teach our children to do the same. We live here year-round, and we were here for our home when it was destroyed by nature years ago. We have worked extremely hard to build it back up again, and the emotional toll that storm took on us was almost too much to handle.

But our home is beautiful again; many years later, and we would be heartbroken to see our hard work go to waste. Please, pick up after yourselves and take pride in where you vacation, because you mean a lot to this place too.

If you’re on the road, please try your best to pay attention to traffic patterns and signs. Our laws may be different than those in your home state. And if you happen to cross paths with a local in the event that you have misread those signs or accidentally broken those laws, please try your best not to scream at them or get angry with them. Chances are, they’re most likely just trying to get to work where they’re going to end up serving you.

So please, vacationer, please respect our island. We are so happy to have you here, and we know that you love this place almost as much as we do. This is your vacation destination, but it is our home. Just keep that in mind the next time you come to the shore.

Yours truly,

A Local from the Shore