Outer Banks, NC

I had been dreading the Friday, May 2nd (Happy Birthday, Uncle Scott!), travel day for some time.  For most of the trip I have kept the travel to 4-5 hours every 4 days but on Friday we have to go 7.5 hours from Asheville to the Outer Banks.  That 7.5 hours turned into 9.5 hours as we had some travel difficulties.  We hadn’t gone far when someone honked at us to say we had a bicycle issue.  The bike rack is on the back of the trailer and when we got off the freeway we found that Will’s bike was dragging because the fork had become detached from the wheel.  David grabbed the bike (he was fixing it in an exit lane of traffic) and secured it in the back of the truck. That was delay #1.  Then, we accidentally got too far down the road to find truck stops where it is easy to refill our rig.  So, we ended up trying a station that took us some time to extract ourselves from without getting any fuel as we couldn’t fit where the diesel was. We tried a 2nd station, where we could fit in the diesel spot BUT there was a work truck fuelling ahead of us that took FOREVER.  Then we found out that the pump was just incredibly slow!  We didn’t arrive at our campground until about 8:30 so we had to set up camp in the dark.  I hurriedly made us some hotcakes for dinner and we went to bed.

Saturday we headed out to see the beach we were camped by.  After such a long driving day I wanted to just enjoy the campground and the beach.  We spent a couple of hours in the indoor pool and a couple hours at the beach, collecting shells and jumping in the waves. The Outer Banks are gorgeous in the sunshine!  Just after we got back from the beach we welcomed my niece Rachel with her husband, Nielsen, & son, Beckam (the Lundgrens) who had come from their new home in Fredericksburg to spend the weekend with us (they slept in an AirBnB a couple of minutes away but hung out with us the rest of the time.)  They had dinner with us then headed back to their place to put Beckham to bed.  Beckham was quite a hit with all the kids, so cute and happy.

Sunday was very rainy.  Church was great, lots of visitors just like when we go to McCall.  I got to wrestle Beckham during Sacrament meeting.  Zina also took a turn and we got a cute picture.  We sat by one of the other visitors in Sunday School and it turns out that they know the Thompsons in the Sunnyside Ward.  I don’t know them personally but I met their son Asa when he was in theater camp with my kids last summer.  Small world.  We had planned on going to Kitty Hawk and the first flight national monument after church but it was just too rainy.  So, we headed back to the trailer and played games.  It cleared up in the late afternoon and we had a Sundayish visit to the beach (we didn’t stay dry but we didn’t do any wave surfing!)  

Myra finds a ray on her Sunday walk.

Monday also dawned very stormy (the thunder woke me way before I wanted to be awake)  but we headed out to Kitty Hawk with hope that it would quit.  The Wright Brothers National Memorial was a great place to visit.  We actually watched a video made by a park ranger at the monument about the memorial that David found on the internet.  It was a good preparation to go.  It amazed me how hard they worked to get to that point where they made that first flight, how they had to overcome challenges and discouragement.  Wilbur Wright famously expressed that he felt “afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man.” He felt so strongly about this that he pursued it single-mindedly.  And, his brother Orville being so close to him, shared the dream and worked to make it happen.  It was fun to know that they got their mechanical interest from their mother.  The exhibits there are small but meaningful.  They have granite boulders indicating the length of their first 4 flights.  Their longest flight was 859 feet and 59 seconds.  I was curious to see if Will could run faster than that and he could!  For people who have a great interest in flying I believe this is like a pilgrimage.  For me, I just really enjoyed learning how they achieved their goal.  I was also impressed with their business acumen until David explained to me that their protection of their technology hindered the USA’s ability in the aeronautical technology race with other countries.  The Lundgrens went with us to the memorial and then we enjoyed lunch at one of the Outer Banks most recommended restaurants–The Blue Moon.  Lunch was excellent and we can recommend it also!  Rachel is a professional photographer and so she took our family pictures on the beach after our late lunch.  We had about an hour to swim on the beach before dark.  Nielsen & Will tried body surfing while the rest of us just enjoyed the waves.  We had a simple dinner of cereal and toast before heading to bed.  We found the Outer Banks (OBX in popular culture) to be a great place to just relax.