OBX...Outer Banks Vacation!

We had such an awesome vacation!!!

We started out by taking a ferry from Swans Quarter to Ocracoke Island...a 2 1/2 hour trip. While on the island we visited our first lighthouse of the trip and a terrible little museum for Blackbeard who resided on the island (can you say "tourist trap"!)

Then we took another ferry (45 mins) over to Hatteras. There we grabbed lunch at Dirty Dick's Crab Shack....not the best crab cakes I've ever had but the cocktail sauce was yummy. From there we drove to our 2nd lighthouse, Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. We got to climb this one...all 257 stairs! Whew! Our final lighthouse stop of the day was Bodie Lighthouse. We couldn't climb that one either. We finally made it to the house in Corolla about 7 pm. The last 20 miles took us over an hour! Traffic was awful. We saw our 4th lighthouse on the way to the house, Currituck.

Sunday we spent all day at the beach and then after dinner we played this wacky game my brother brought. I will have to find out more about it and post later...got to make one to play here.

Monday we spent at the beach too and then went to a baseball game...the Outbanks Daredevils. Afterwards we all went for Coldstone Ice Cream! Yum!

My niece Libby's favorite saying is "GASP!" and she holds her hand in front of her mouth! Hysterical!

Tuesday we went shopping in Corolla for souvenirs and then spent the evening watching movies. 16 people and two dogs in one small living room...cozy!

Wednesday we spent at the beach again. This time though we talked Mom into coming with us. Andre and Tim drove their 4-wheel vehicles down the beach and we parked right by the water. Mom just had to hop out of the truck and walk a few feet. Moose and Oso also came with us. Oso did not like the water but Moose loved it! He even crawled up on Jeff's boogie board and tried to surf! We also got the kayaks out and went for a ride.

On Thursday we got up early and went fishing. The 4 hour trip was lots of fun. Everyone caught fish although most of them were not big enough to keep. I even caught two at once...don't believe me? While check out the picture below. Later that night we got cleaned up and went to the beach to take family pictures and fly kites. The kids had a blast flying the kites on the beach and sunset was beautiful. See the family pictures on the right.

On Friday Mom and Andre left to go home. After breakfast we went to climb the Currituck Lighthouse and then went to spend our final day at the beach. The waves were really high and we had a blast riding the boogie boards.

Saturday came way too fast and it was time to pack up and head home. What a wonderful week at the beach! One of the best vacations I've ever had....way to go Neen on planning our family vacation.

The traffic was bad trying to get off of the island too so we stopped and shopped some more and then headed down to the Wright Brother Museum for a few hours. We finally made it home at 5:30 am....exhausted!!!

Confession....I took about 1500 pictures over the week!!!