Waking up in Florence and hitting the road to the sounds of Jim Dale reading
the sixth Harry Potter book found us in Duck, OBX in 5 hours--"OBX"
being the cute way they abbreviate "Outer Banks" (and is as far as I
can tell a linguistic and cultural equivalent term to the
"OC".) Geographically-speaking, it's a 200+ mile series of
barrier islands extending along the coast of Virginia and North Carolina.
There is one road connecting these islands which is very crowded. I
remember going to Ocean City, NJ years ago and wondering why literally everyone
on the East Coast would want to be in the exact same place at the exact same
time, and I get it now that they were all just on their way home from the Outer
Banks. (Incidentally, we tried to go the the very famous Duck Donuts, but
the wait was was over an hour, so instead we tried to go to a Dunkin Donuts,
but the wait was almost just as long. For Dunkin donuts!)
That's snarky, and I'm only engaging in because of the constant rain and low
70s temps there, which the locals ae calling "October weather", but
which turns out to actually be--in a quite real way--the very late June weather
we've paid to experience. I also had beginning Wednesday the single worst
sore throat I've ever had. I even visited Urgent Care twice (no strep
throat, thankfully), but man, it's a burner. So I'm not being super
charitable to the ol' Outer Banks right now. But enough of the
negative--we make adventure lemonade out of lemons so here are the highlights
of the OBX!
1.) We arrived on a Sunday and I spent two hours completing the group's
grocery buy at the Food Lion, while the kids sat with Erica in the hot car and
watched a movie on the iPad. It then took another hour to go the three miles
to the house. No! Not going to dwell on the low lights.
2.) The house was right up our alley--5 bedrooms with a kids bunk room
(which they loved), a spacious pool and hot tub, and an early-to-mid 1990s
aesthetic that meant we didn't have to pay for upgraded décor. Plus, it
was also just a short walk to the beach. It was so nice to be able to
spend time in doors with friends, especially the Stals, after so many months of
our kids only seeing them masked and outside.
3.) When it wasn't raining, we spent most of the time at the pool.
Apart from a short walk on the beach the first night, we did just get two real
days in the sand, but even then rain chased us off the beach after a few hours
each time. The surf was quite beefy, so the kids didn't spend a ton of
time in the waves. James, God bless em', refused to be cowed by his
broken foot, so invented a kind of game where he'd dig himself into the sand
right where the waves broke, then try to hold on so the ocean wouldn't dislodge
him. We were afraid he'd reinjure the foot, but he didn't, and he even
got a number of the other kids to play along with him. One hates to say
it, but the pool is just easier than the beach with the kids because it's right
by the house for diaper changing purposes and you don't have to lug all your
gear to it. I got great mileage out of the reggae-intensive playlist I
made for Erica when we went to Hawai'i for our tenth anniversary a few years
back, and my how the tiki drinks did flow for all the parents. The kids
had a fripping ball. As the mass produced slogan art on the hallway
wall reminded us, "The tans will fade but the memories will remain."
 |
| Bit o' pool time |
4.) On one of the cool weather days, the group drove down to Jockey Ridge State Park, which is just a really huge sand dune nearby to where the Wright Brothers flew the first airplane. The big thing to do there is to fly kites, on account of the presence of the same gale force winds the aforementioned brothers exploited with their plane. Coincidentally enough, directly across the road from the dune is Kitty Hawk Kites. They do a tidy little trade there, considering most tourists don’t normally pack kites when they go on vacation.
James got a dragon shaped kite, and I’m told did an awesome job flying the thing (I was in urgent care, so I didn’t get to see it). He bragged that his kite “never touched the ground” and that it “went all the way out on the spool,” so he got a new vocabulary word out of it, too.
5.) The Bondis departed on Thursday for the mountain side of the
state. We got another beach afternoon in
on Friday after waiting out the rain, and after the Stals departed for home
early Saturday morning. We left after a
nice pool morning on Saturday, and landed in Frederick, MD for the night at my
sister’s house. The next day was a long
haul across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana.
By 7:15pm we were home, after 3 weeks and 2 days. Vacation, all we ever wanted!
