Girl’s Weekend

I’m going to tell you a Fairytale. Fairytale’s aren’t actually true…. but this one is.

Once upon a time I was driving when my phone rang. I answered it (probably not a great idea, but I put it on speaker phone so I was ‘hands free’). It was one of my best friends from Washington. She asked how I would feel about her coming out (as in clear across the USA) to visit me. What kind of question is that? “Can I come visit you in North Carolina?” Heck yes!
I actually had to pull the car over, I was so excited I couldn’t even focus on driving. We’re lucky to be alive! I was so flattered that she would want to visit me. And if I remember correctly I screamed a few times.

But that is just the beginning of my story….
When we found out the days Megan was coming, Shawn requested time off of work. Who does that? Amazing husbands, that’s who!

Megan and I decided to visit the Outer Banks. I had just been there, which was a little like dejavu, but we did a few new things I’d never done on my previous trip. |
The Outer Banks is 4 hours away and we needed a reliable car.
The day before her arrival, our Civic broke down. Big time! The repairs were going to cost over 1K and take 3 days to fix. After crying for a while, Shawn reminded me that this problem was easy to solve. He rented a car. I’m way too emotional couldn’t see outside of the box.

So, after Megan traveled an ENTIRE DAY to get here, I made her get up at 5am to start our road trip to the OBX.
Here we are geared up and ready to go. (Actually, this is us when we got back. We didn’t take a picture at 5am. Just pretend)

We stopped at Bojangles for breakfast and got some biscuits. They were really delicious… or I was really hungry.

You have to excuse my pictures. First of all, I brought our dinky camera that takes pretty awful pictures. And I didn’t take many pictures.
Megan does have more, but she hasn’t sent them to me yet (hint hint). When she does, I’ll update this post.

We arrived at the Outer Banks and stopped really quickly at Fort Raleigh to learn a little about the Lost Colony

Then we drove through the National Seashore on our way to Cape Hatteras. We stopped the car and walked along the shore for a while. It was beautiful. These pictures don’t do it justice. Miles and miles and miles of undeveloped shoreline, COVERED with seashells. I collected a whole bag full of whole shells (of which I still have no plans for, they’re just sitting on my counter… but they’re pretty).
  

We were pretty fascinated with the rippled sand.

Cape Hatteras hadn’t changed since my last visit. It was more fun climbing to the top with a girlfriend, rather than a whinny child, though. I’ve decided, everything is more fun with a girlfriend! Or is it that everything is more fun when you’re not responsible over 4 other little bodies?
Here we are at the top….

We ate some GREAT food! Megan made me get out of my comfort zone and order something besides Cesear Salad (it was a real challenge).

This is me holding a soft-shell crab sandwich at Dirty Dicks. There is a WHOLE crab in there…. claws and all! And instead of breaking the shell and digging out the meat, you actually eat the entire body. I was a little scared, but after 1 bite I was hooked. It was delicious!

We went to the hotel, put on our bathing suits and grabbed our boogie boards. I took 1 look at the water and froze… there was no way I was getting in there. The waves were too turbulent. Megan was crazy and made me get in. I ruined all the fun by almost crying (I was convinced I was going to die). So, we just sat on our boogie boards and got washed by the waves. We decided to try again the next day.

We were thirsty and needed a drink. And there’s no better place to quench your immediate thirst than at a Brew Thru! This is the best idea ever!!

We ate dinner at the Blue Moon and I had the best Cesear Salad I have EVER had (I know, I promised not to order that, but it was too tempting)

The next morning, the waves were even MORE turbulent.

I know, you’re probably all looking at that picture and thinking, “so what, that looks like nothing”, but believe me… I’ve never been more scared of waves than I have been of those! It was like a White Squall, really!
Here I am, standing at the edge of a pier, scared for my life!

The night before I had promised Megan I would get into the water… so I kept my word. We stood as the waves totally knocked us over, and over, and over. I swear I had bruises on my thighs from the impact. But I have never laughed so hard. It was life threatening, and fun!

After that we took ourselves to higher ground… much higher.
We visited the Wright Brother’s Memorial and gathered all the First Flight knowledge we could!
Then I raced Megan to the top of the memorial. I WON. But If this were her blog post, I’m sure she would claim the win. It’s debatable. Yet I do have 1 elderly couple on my side!
At the top….

One of the great things about the Outer Banks is all of the thrift stores.
We stopped by one and found most of their items outside. I just saw a bunch of junk. That was until my eyes caught a glimpse of this old bike. It was just what I’ve always wanted… an old rusty bike (to refurbish, of course). There were no prices. They just had a jar on the table and were asking for donations only.
I stood in front of the bike for 10 minutes, just staring. Until Megan, who knows me really well, and is crazy herself, insisted that I buy it and we could stuff it into the car. I stuck $2 (yes, $2) into the donation jar and we worked some contortion magic to fit that sucker into the back.
Best buy ever!!

Next stop…. Jockey Ridge State Park, AKA the Sahara Dessert
It is the tallest natural sand dune system in the Eastern United States, and boy is it breathtaking!
Note to self – take my children here
It was endless fun. We walked up to the tallest dune, then ran down it, of course. It was quite a hike around the dunes, but it was also very relaxing. Looking around, I seriously felt like I was in the middle of the dessert, hundreds of miles from civilization.
 

Here’s 1 last picture of food. These were the best fish tacos I’ve ever had. They were from Tortuga’s Lie. I would recommend it if you ever head out there! 
 

As you can tell, this really was a fairytale. I got to enjoy an adventurous, kid-free weekend with my best friend! Thank you Megan, for making this happen. It is something I will never forget.
But this is not The End. This story will continue… one of these days… in Washington!

I wonder if they have a brew thru?