Outer Banks Trip - Part 1

To celebrate our anniversary, Lee and I planned a long weekend at the Outer Banks. I hadn't been there since I was a little girl, and I don't remember much from that trip, so I was excited to go and do all of the touristy sight-seeing stuff.

(In an effort to avoid one long rambling post, I'm going to break our trip up into a few shorter posts.)

We took Friday off from work and headed to the beach on Thursday night, after dropping Sugar off with the babysitter (aka my parents). We stayed in Beaufort at Lee's family's house Thursday night. We had to leave the beach at 6am Friday morning to drive to Cedar Island to catch the ferry at 7am. We got to the ferry just as the sun was rising. If I have ever been up and outside early enough to see the sun rise, I do not remember it. It was pretty though.

The first ferry ride -- Cedar Island to Ocracoke -- was about 2.5 hours. We slept most of the time, due to the 5am wakeup, but I did get this contemplative shot of Lee:

We wandered around Ocracoke for about an hour and took some pics at the lighthouse:

We had lunch at Howard's Pub and then made our way to the end of the island to catch the ferry to Hatteras. We were trying to make the noon ferry, because there was really nothing left to see and do in Ocracoke for another whole hour. But we ran into construction on the way there and pulled up just.in.time. to see the ferry pulling away. Lee said bad words and slammed doors. I just laughed because of course that would happen to us.

But instead of running only every hour, the ferries were running every half hour because of all the construction trucks going back and forth. So within 10 minutes another ferry had arrived. All was well and we made our way over to Hatteras.

Our plan for Friday was to make our way from Beaufort to Nags Head (where our hotel was), taking our time and stopping along the way to see the sights. Just driving all the way up Highway 12 along the waterfront was one of the best parts of the experience (and the weather was perfect).

In Hatteras, we stopped at the Graveyard of the Atlantic museum and then the lighthouse.

Then I made Lee stop on the side of the road so I could take a picture of all of the kite surfers. It was so fascinating and beautiful to watch.

Next was Bodie Island lighthouse.

Finally, after a long day of ferries, driving, museums and lighthouses, our final stop before heading to the hotel was ... BREW THRU.

Going to a Brew Thru was one of the only things I remember from our family vacation to the Outer Banks so many years ago. It's basically a drive-thru convenience store, but Erin and I thought it was the coolest.thing.ever.

After stocking up on beer (they even had a lime for Lee's Coronas), we checked into our hotel in Nags Head to rest for a bit.

Then we got ready and went to dinner at Basnight's Lone Cedar Cafe on the waterfront. It was off the charts good. We got the crab dip, which turned out to be the best crab dip in the history of food. I ordered the seafood pasta (shrimp, scallops, and sundried tomatoes in a wine sauce) and a wedge salad with blue cheese, tomatoes, bacon and ranch dressing. I mean COME ON. Is that not the absolute perfect meal for me?

Ok, I'll leave your mouth watering and be back tomorrow with Part 2 of our trip.