Paradise With A Bite: Outer Banks Vacation: The Beginning

Sam, Inga, and I, along with five of our friends, spent the week in the Outer Banks. We rented a house in Avon just across the street from the beach. We had planned this vacation months in advance and by the time July rolled around I was in desperate need of a vacation. We left on Friday not a moment too soon.

We took two days to drive down thinking a 12+ hour drive would be too much for Inga all in one go. James, Sam's cousin, drove down with us so I didn't even drive at all! I spent the ride in the back with Inga. I saw a lot of this:

We drove through West Virginia into Charlottesville, VA on the first day. We went at the speed of baby and made a few stops along the way to take a break from the car. We also encountered the first of many traffic jams on I-64, which we were able to by-pass on a frontage road. Charlottesville is an interesting city because there is so much history there as well as that unique college town vibe. It's not a bad place to stop and maybe when Inga is older we will visit Monticello. Probably the highlight of the day for Inga was going swimming after dinner at the hotel pool. A side note: DO NOT stay at the Comfort Inn; it was terrible.

The next day we continued the drive through Virginia and into North Carolina. Traffic was pretty slow from Richmond through Newport News, which is pretty typical. Things were alright until we were about 5 miles from Kitty Hawk. We sat in stand still traffic for over 3 hours. Apparently, there was a multi-car accident just across the bridge at the first traffic light in Kitty Hawk. We were all going a little stir crazy in the car. We let Inga out of her car seat until traffic started moving again. It's amazing how everything becomes a toy in the car. "Hey, look! There's a flash light and pressure gauge in the glove box!" We reached the house way later than expected around 8pm. When we pulled into the carport, I told Inga, "Guess what? We're here!" She squealed so loud! She then stayed up until 10:30pm crawling all over the house because she was so full of beans. The other members of our group drove down separately all in one day. They were even later than us because they were stopped by 3 accidents all in the Nags Head area!

The next day we ventured over to the Avon beach in the morning. Inga re-discovered the joys of sand. She also learned that you have to watch out for waves. She and Sam got swamped by one right after this picture was taken.

We learned the hard way the mosquitoes were awful this year in the OBX. We were attacked walking to the beach. Marauding mosquitoes was a recurrent theme on our vacation.

Jesse (Sam's cousin), Sharhonda (Jesse's girlfriend), and James

Monday it rained all morning long. In the afternoon, Sam, Kevin, Inga and I headed north to see Jockey Ridge State Park where there are big sand dunes. On the way we stopped at a picnic area on the sound side for lunch. Sam, Kevin, and Inga went in search of clams.

I guess it had been raining a lot this summer. The sand dunes had lots of ponds of fresh water in the low spots. We felt like we were lost in the desert or something. It was a little surreal. Since it was so hot, we decided to walk through the ponds.