Vacation Bullet Points

Howdy boys and girls - I'm sure you're dying to read all about my first trip down to the Outer Banks. I'm pretty sure I'm one of the only Maryland residents that has not been to this area before (and there are plenty of cars adorned with "OBX" stickers that prove my point).

I've been gone for a week now and plenty has happened over the course of that week that it really is just too much to type. And seriously - who has the attention span to read through a long blog post? I'll try to keep this simple.

Lowlights

- It took us close to 9 f'n hours to get down there. 9. We were on the brink of divorce by the time we made it into Duck, NC. We didn't leave Baltimore until 11:30am (against advice from others to try to get down to NC before noon) because I had Dragonboat practice that I felt I just couldn't miss. Plus our check-in time wasn't until 4pm that Saturday. Why rush to get down there if we had to hang around with a car full of crap? Oh and The Mr didn't even finish packing until Saturday morning.
- Our dogs weren't too crazy about the beach. We were stoked about being able to take our dogs to a dog friendly beach town and they didn't even like it! We totally didn't take into account that the blazing hot sun wasn't a good idea for them and didn't have an umbrella (next year we're getting a beach tent!). Petie was fine on the beach and trotted right over to the water and even let it splash him. Emily? Just the sound of the waves crashing left her shivering in the sand with her tail tucked between her legs.
- And while taking our dogs on vacation was fabulous, we didn't get to sleep in much because the dogs always woke up around 5:30-6am… every morning. Now The Mr will argue that he deals with this at home but it was VACATION! Vacations are meant for sleeping a lot.
- The late check-in time and early check-out time resulted in lost beach time (2 days). Boo!
- It rained all day on Thursday. Boo!
- We learned the hard way that we need to be better prepared for beach house trips (i.e. always pack bath towels and more kitchen utensils if you plan on cooking).
- Upon our arrival at home I discovered that I had erroneously left a banana on the counter… and it rotted and gave birth to about 50 fruit flies. It was a great fuck you welcome from Baltimore!

Highlights (luckily there are more of these than lowlights)

- The Outer Banks area (at least Duck) is probably one of the cleanest and quietest beach towns I have ever been too. Sadly - I can only really compare the area to Ocean City, Md and its surrounding beaches so I'm not sure if what I just said is even truly fair. After the 9 hour ride I had declared that I was never returning. By the end of the trip, I declared that I wanted to make a yearly trip down to Duck (but I will NOT buy an "OBX" sticker… EVER).
- Even though our dogs woke us up early every morning, it just motivated me to run along the bike trail. I ran about 2.5 miles 5 days out of the week. While this might not sound like much of a relaxing time to you, I felt great. I like being active and it made my gorging on junk food and margaritas justifiable.
- We walked our dogs every morning and every night. I'm not sure if they loved this or hated it. We thought it was great since most of the time we're away from home for about 8-9 hours every weekday.
- The Mr makes a mean Bloody Mary. I don't even usually like Bloody Mary drinks but his were delicious. I knew I married him for a reason.
- On Wednesday when we were playing in the ocean, The Mr noticed 5 dolphins swimming very (and I mean ridiculously) close to shore. This was probably cool for most people in the water to see but Theresa and I both screamed and paddled like hell away from the waves to avoid being mauled by a dolphin (or as Theresa yelled, "You don't know if it's a dolphin!"). Seeing very large dark shadows of mammals in the water is scary as shit. Since we survived the potential mauling, we can laugh about it… but I was scared shitless at the time.
- During the rainy times (it rained in the evenings a few nights), we made the most of it by watching 2 movies: Hancock and The Dark Knight (or whatever the new Batman movie is called). At least I got watching those out of the way. I believe The Mr officially owes watching "Mamma Mia" with me now. Score!
- I obsessively played with Theresa's "Brain Age" game and managed to get my brain age from 44 down to 41 in 5 days. Go me. And seriously - my brain age is 41 years old?! Yikes.
- got me a sweet VEGAN Matt & Nat handbag from The Mr on my birthday.

- We had a delicious dinner at a fancy schmancy restaurant where at one point it seemed that I was on a date with Theresa and The Mr was on a date with T-bag's lover.
- Caught up on all of my magazines. Is it sad that this is a highlight?
- No work! I think that's highlight enough.

Pictures!

Now onto the fun stuff. We actually didn't take a lot of pictures just because we didn't really think about it…

Obligatory foot shot!

I have to thank Theresa for the bday pedicure. My toenail polished had chipped away and I looked like a Baltimore city hooker from the ankles down.

The house we stayed in:


The pool next door. We decided not to get a pool but later regretted it. This is me staring longingly at it.


An evil raccoon (it was hanging out outside of the fancy schmancy restaurant):


The Mr setting up a facebook page for Petie. I wish I could say I was kidding but I'm not.


I watched this Grandpa dig quite the elaborate mote for his grandkids...


This is the result of Theresa and I playing, "How many little stones can we throw on The Mr until he wakes up?" Apparently a lot.




He was only woken up when I tried to play, "How many little stones can I remove from The Mr's back before he wakes up?" The answer is one.

Petie spent a lot of time begging for food. Theresa wouldn't share her hushpuppy.


Sad to be leaving...


However, on the way - we saw the ridiculous amount of traffic exiting the town so we decided to hit up Corolla and see the lighthouse (and to kill time).





And some of the crazy large beach houses we saw...



Lastly - what the hell is this? These were everywhere:

Can someone explain the pegasus painted statues to me?

Oh and p.s. Here's a ridiculously cute picture of my dogs sleeping on the ride home.


I'll post the pics The Mr took from the wetlands/lighthouse park sometime this week.