Beach Trip

After more than two years living in North Carolina, we finally made it out to the coast for the first time on Saturday. While our good friends were headed to the coast for the whole weekend (helping work on a relative's beach house) we only had time for a day trip, as we needed to be home today to keep on packing for our imminent move (closing in barely two weeks!), but we were determined to make it out there!

Although we'd heard parking at the beach could be a challenge, I think people had meant that as "the parking lots are very full", rather than, as we discovered, "The difference between parking lot and sand trap is hard to spot until you've driven into the middle of it". Out of our three vehicles headed to the beach, two ended up overshooting the rightmost edge of the parking lot and got stuck in the sand. I'm amazed that the parking lot didn't have a fence, or at least a warning sign of some sort at the edge, as ours were not the only vehicles who discovered the sand traps that day!

After some unsuccessful attempts to free ourselves, we were fortunately aided by a couple of Marines (or so I assume, but crewcut muscular guys with tattoos plus Camp Lejeune nearby would seem to make it a safe assumption...) who happened by with their pickup truck and pulled us out of the sand. Huzzah!

Our sand trap adventures seem to have set the trend for the day. Two of our friends missed out on the beach altogether that day (the house work taking much longer than expected), one of the kids came down with a sore throat and an upset stomach, I lost my new sunglasses (note to self: either leave them on the beach when playing in the waves, or invest in a retaining strap of some sort!), and Heather got badly sunburned. But we didn't let that stop us all from playing in the waves, enjoying the fresh air, having entertaining conversations, and in general having a great time.