An Amazing Week

Though there wasn't much in the way of knitting accomplished last week in the Outer Banks, there was a lot of beach time, relaxing and having fun. The house was amazing. Plenty of room for all of us - my little cousins even each got their own room. It had an elevator, huge kitchen, hot tub and pool along with a great extra room that got plenty of use.

A home theater! The seats were super comfortable and fully reclined. The bonus was that you could watch television on the big screen also. The olympics were bigger than life!

The drive down wasn't too bad. We always break it up by driving to my cousins house in Baltimore for a night, then leaving from there. It's pretty much exactly halfway of our full 600 mile journey. We kept ourselves entertained with some knitting (I did make some progress on the stripey socks), books on CD ("Lightning" by Dean Koontz was very entertaining and interesting!) and people watching in the traffic and cars that zoomed by. The most interesting - this guy spotted in Virginia.

I didn't even see him as I was driving, but my sister spotted him from the back seat, so we slowed down to let him pass, grabbed the camera and passed him again. He waved when we went by staring. I have no idea why someone would drive with a Storm Trooper helmet on (to protect his true identity maybe?), but he seemed very happy in his Star Wars world.

The routine was pretty evident by day two of vacation. This is our fifth year going on a family beach vacation, and we have it down to a science now. Get up, breakfast, prep for beach (make lunch, slap sunscreen on kids and ourselves, pack beach bags) and spend the day on the beach. We return home a bit after lunchtime for a swim in the pool and then dinner and relaxing. I even managed to run three to four miles each morning with my cousin. It was much cooler and the sun was not blazing early in the morning, so it made for nice running. The scenery wasn't bad either.

Last week had all the elements of a typical beach vacation. A bit of sunburn, ice cream, reading (I started and finished Beak of the Finch - a great book if you love science and evolution) and playing in the waves.

I have to say though, the highlight of this house was the view. We have rented houses on the Sound side before (versus the ocean side) but there have usually been trees or another house obscuring our view. Not this year. In the daytime, the view was beautiful.

Sunset though, was truly amazing. All the huge windows on the back of the house faced West, so we got a spectacular show every night.

(this was my favorite)

Every night I took pictures of the sunset, and used it as an opportunity to play with the manual setting on the camera.

A full week of sunsets. (click through for bigger images) There was only one night were we didn't get a spectacular one. It was too overcast to let even a little sun through. The other nights more than made up for it though!

Hubby went scuba diving most days as he's not really a fan of the beach. All in all we had a wonderful time and can't wait to go back next year!