Ok where was I...right, we'd just left Disney...It's tough to remember!
So, around 10:30 we left Magic Kingdom...and we drove. And we drove. And drove.
We pulled off at a rest stop, slept for a few hours until I woke up to two middle aged men having a conversation right outside of our car. Seriously guys...you saw me sleeping right there, was it necessary to talk that loudly???
Brent traded off driving after a little while and I'm pretty sure I passed out again after that. Next thing I remember was Brent hitting me to wake me up as we passed over a bridge in North Carolina which took us to the Outer Banks (abbreviated as OBX - those clever Carolinans). Once we hit the banks, we drove north for a while with no plan in mind of where to stay, where to eat, or what the hell we were going to do while we were there. Luckily, my sister and her husband once lived in North Carolina and had a few good suggestions of places to go and explore once we got settled. So...we just had to get settled!
We pulled off at an information center where we grabbed every last pamphlet on camping that we could find. Not knowing for sure which place would be best, I thought "Why not ask those kindly looking elderly ladies at the desk?"
So up to the desk I go and ask very politely "Excuse me, could you tell me where we could find a nice camping site which allows tents?"
The woman then proceeded to tell me that the only camping places we could find were at X, Y, and Z which were in some town which I had never heard of (and wasn't even sure was anywhere near me). I think she thought I was a local. I'm not sure why a local would be asking for a tent camping site, but you never know.
Anywho, we made our decision basically by shuffling through the pamphlets we had collected and picking the prettiest one (we even had to read a map...a MAP! And no, not google maps, a real-honest-to-goodness MAP map - we were totally roughing it). We ended up staying in Rodanthe at this cute little camp/watersports rental place (yes they did both) that had quite a few tent sites still open. The best part - it was right on the ocean!!! The worst part - it had been raining ALL freaking day, and most sites were gigantic puddles by the time we'd gotten there. We picked the site that looked least soggy and set up camp.
At this point we were both tired and very hungry. I don't know if I've really been able to express this or not, but Brent and I can be extremely indecisive - especially when it comes to picking a place to eat. It took us about 15 minutes to just choose a random sandwich shop. Once we entered said sandwich shop, we decided we didn't really want to eat there (it wasn't exactly what I would call a dinner place anyways) and left. Using Yelp on Brent's phone, we found another place, but decided it wasn't exactly what we were in the mood for (I mostly wanted something with pasta, and this didn't have any pasta!). So we found a third restaurant which was much more north than we were, but was rated the 2nd favorite restaurant in OBX. Upon closer inspection, Brent found that it was also one of the most expensive restaurants in OBX...so we decided to see what the 1st rated restaurant was...
Blue Moon Beach Grill.
Just in case you didn't get that, let me repeat myself: BLUE MOON BEACH GRILL.
If only I could have angelic music playing right now...then you could maybe experience just a sliver of the joy that I felt upon tasting the happiness that was the meal I had that night. This tiny hole in the wall strip mall joint was nothing too impressive when you first walk up to it. But the food...oh my goodness the food. Simply amazing. The staff there is awesome too - not the creepy overattentive kind, but not just a bunch of moody jerks either. They'll strike up conversation with you if you look like you'd be interested, but leave you alone as soon as the food comes out. This place was simply perfect. We even got some dessert to go! (Also freaking delicious).
After dinner we headed back to the campsite. I was SET on having a campfire, even though it had rained that day and everything was still a little soggy. So we tried to find some firewood. This proved to be a bit problematic as every store we stopped at seemed to be closed, and none of them really advertised that they had firewood. So...being the upstanding citizens we are...we pulled up to a closed place, looked around and saw a cage FULL of firewood. We figured "Hey, we could take it now, and pay them tomorrow!"
...I opened the cage (it wasn't even locked!) and I grabbed some firewood. I wish I could say I was drunk, but no...no I wasn't. This was a sad, sad lawless moment in my life. Brent even tried to talk me out of it, but I just kept going! I shoved the firewood in the back of the car, jumped back in and drove off like a bandit in the night. I'm not proud of it...
We realized we needed some ginger ale or something to mix the booze with (I had to drink away my guilt) and came upon a small store on the side of the road. In front of that small store...firewood. We bought some firewood, ginger ale, and candy (so as to not look suspicious) and took off back towards the first closed store. We shoved the firewood back in the cage and took off, never to speak of it again.
We started up our fire with our legit firewood, but it was awfully smokey (I guess that happens when everything is wet). We enjoyed our delicious desserts and called it a night soon after.
12:30 AM: I wake up to the sound of small rain drops outside. I don't think much of it.
1:00 AM: I wake up to small rain drops on my face. I start to think more about this.
1:15 AM: The rain drops start to get a bit heavier...I start to realize that I'm not going to get back to sleep with this going on.
I grab my beach towel from the car and try to dry off the ceiling of the tent. It's futile and I make many larger drops fall down - mostly on Brent.
**I forgot to mention earlier that the winds were so strong once we got there, we were unable to put the tarp that we had bought on the top of the tent to prevent this situation from coming to fruition.
 |
| From our campsite in OBX |
I'm pretty sure I slept through the rest of the night, but we woke up to a few puddles inside the tent the next morning, and my blanket was extremely moist (and I don't use that word often).
Even though that night sucked, I did wake up to a beautiful view...and the waves were calming to listen to between the rain drops.
We started the morning off with some light kayaking on the ocean. The guy at the campsite told us that off to the right down by a marker there was a sunken barge, so we made our way over. However, the water was a bit too dark and murky to see anything below, so we just took his word for it! We got back from kayaking, took down the tent (which had dried off by then) and packed up the car yet again. Just to make sure that it wasn't a fluke, we went back to BLUE MOON BEACH GRILL for lunch and had some extremely tasty sandwiches (if you go, make sure to try the Mahi mahi BLT - genius!!!).
