Too Much To Do!

We did way too much today. Since tomorrow morning is the end of our rental we decided to leave tonight instead and not have to deal with the normal exodus travel that occurs on Saturday mornings in the area. This meant we had to pack everything up. So what did we do? Went down to visit the Bodie Lighthouse, went to the beach and then for good measure we ended up going to the pool also. Then we had to pack and drop off the keys and to top it off Quinn also wanted to go and do the go karts again before we left. That is what you call a full day.






The inside of the lighthouse was open to the public which was new for us. Previously when we had visited the bottom area wasn't open. There isn't that much to do inside since you're not allowed to walk up to the top of this one. This also meant they had a park ranger type person standing outside of the open door constantly which meant getting pictures was significantly tougher. The one time he wasn't there I wasn't in a good position for a wide angle shot and he got back before I could reposition.










We walked along the path to the pond like we did last time, so nothing overly new from that perspective. But this time in addition to the inside of the lighthouse being open so was the gift shop and information area. The kids got some more information on the lighthouse and how it's operated from inside there.


After that we jaunted across the street to Coquina Beach (that's the same beach we went to earlier in the week, but I didn't know it had an official name at that point). And as we pulled up both kids were whining that they didn't want to go to the beach and weren't going to get out of the car. And after saying "I brought the boogie board" and "You can search for shells" suddenly both kids were out of the car lickity split.












Somehow Ginger managed to get boogie board supervising duty and I ended up having walk along the beach with Catherine looking for shells. And there area a ton of shells down there. The problem is Catherine isn't what you would call discriminating in her shell selection. Shells don't have to be perfect, they can even be broken, and a lot of the ones she would select were. Mostly she liked the bigger shells, the condition of the shells seemed to be moot. This meant every five feet Catherine would find a shell, pick it up, hide it behind her back and call me over to "surprise" me with it. And during this time I was off trying to take some pictures, so I would have to walk all the way back to be surprised. I didn't get as many pictures as I wanted, but I think Catherine enjoyed the outing so it all worked out. I did have to eventually end the expedition and head back when sweat was rolling down my face and I ended up getting suntan lotion in my eye which without anything to get it out with left me unable to open my eye for a bit.






It was just prior to high tide, and since the shelf extends so far at this beach there wasn't a good area where Quinn could go out boogie board without being inundated by waves taller than him. And even though he can "technically" swim, I'm not confident in his ability to swim in those conditions. As such he was confined mostly to playing at the edge of the waves trying desperately to use his boogie board as a sand surfing board. Catherine meanwhile was content to simply dig in the sand and stand in the holes as waves came in and wiped away all the digging work she had done.




Once we got home and had some lunch Ginger and the kids went to the pool while I took some last remaining things to the recycling center. Another negative about Kill Devil Hills area is they don't have mandatory recycling or curbside pickup of recycling, you have to cart your recycling to the center yourself. Luckily the recycling center is right by the neighborhood where we were staying. There were some pictures taken at the pool. Several of me on the slide, but those aren't going on the blog because they were less than flattering, more so than normal. After that it was a mad frantic packing session in which in addition packing I had to rearrange the furniture we had moved, move the cable modem back to its previous location (which it hadn't been working at) and pack the car with what seems like way more stuff than we had when we came down. And with that I'll be ending this since after I do that we'll no longer have internet access anymore.