Air travel is out of the question for us during COVID. It's a good problem to have, but even after some trips to the lake house in Michigan and camping trips to Shades, I still had to use about 100 hours of PTO before year's end.
Parameters were it had to be drivable in a day and had to be kitty friendly.
I was dying for a beach vacation!
I loved our time in Mexico in December 2018 and Indian Shores, FL, in December 2019, but neither presented a lot of opportunity to swim in the glorious sea. Our place in Mexico sat on a reef, so even wading out in the water was treacherous. Florida in December, it turns out, is a bit chilly, and we barely ventured into the water. I love donning flippers and swimming for hours in the warm waters.
Still, I absolutely love the Mexican Caribbean and the Gulf Coast of Florida. Those long stretches of white shores where I can walk for miles and miles, and those beautiful jade waters that mesmerize are probably my favorite thing in life.
But Florida is governed by an idiot and peopled by Covid-denying, mouth-breathing Trumpsters, so Florida was off our list.
I searched the shores of Georgia and South Carolina and couldn't find anything suitable. Suitable equals a little house or condo on the beach for two people (as opposed to 12) and a little kitty cat (as opposed to a dog).
I expanded my search North a bit to North Carolina and found a place in the Outer Banks OBX. A cute one-bedroom right on the beach with a hot tub on the porch and kitty friendly! I was excited to explore the area as a potential ZIP code someday. I've heard great things about NC and the OBX.
Unfortunately, a hurricane was brewing out in the ocean, far from land, but close enough to stir up the ocean. The ocean was formidable, angry, roiling, and an ugly steel-grey brown. It all but swallowed the beach. This was a huge disappointment. Larry had bought me a "boogie board" per my request to use on vacation. In 2011, we spent a week on Tybee Island and had so much fun playing the surf of the Atlantic! We laughed so hard, and I wanted to do that again! On OBX the waves were treacherous and the water freezing. Long walks on the shore were out of the question as most of the beach had been taken out to sea.
We did some exploring of the area. I didn't find the area charming in the least. Instead of palm trees and foliage, there were scraggly scrub oaks and briars. The homes looked neglected. There was no real walkable area in town. We ventured up to Duck and Corolla, where the wild horses are purported to run free, but we couldn't access the beach due to the pounding, roiling surf.
We went to the dunes one afternoon, and that was kind of pretty, but actually less spectacular than the sand dunes of Lake Michigan where I spent my childhood.
Also disconcerting were the crowds...in off season...during school. It might as well have been the 4th of July with number of kids and families, leading us to wonder, do any kids go to school anymore? It left the few restaurants with outdoor options overcrowded and inaccessible. We had a couple of overpriced and mediocre meals out and just decided to cook our own, with thanks to Publix. And unlike Florida, there were no fresh fish markets.
One exception was a burger joint in walking distance of the condo. The outdoor beer garden had a pretty good system where you could order food and pick it up in a to-go bag, then eat at a picnic table in the back. The place was kinda crowded though the tables were distanced, and the wind was blowing pretty fiercely. The cover band took the mic and overamped us as if we were in a major stadium. Now, this has happened before to me. I'll be out in nature, the wild, for a week or more, and when I have to go back to civilization, I can't deal with the crowds or people. I get super anxious. This started happening, and I didn't want to stay. Larry had already gone up to order a to-go beer and to-go food. Just then an older couple walked into the beer garden. She was sassy and trendy in a white denim jacket and pants and sparkly high heels, and her husband was dressed nicely in jeans. They walked in, or rather, they danced in. They looked so happy. They were grooving! They were on vacation! I saw this and said to myself, "Amy, you are a boring old fuddy duddy!" I got up, asked Larry to get me a beer and whatever food he was having and told him I'd save us a picnic table. When he came back with the pager, he asked me why I changed my mind, and I pointed out the young old couple. Now it's a running joke between us. I'm glad I saw them, and that I changed my mind. So we had one night out in OBX that was pretty fun.
I regret that my disappointment ran so deeply, but I think I can attribute that to some family stuff I was dealing with at the time. The image of the storms out at sea only reflected what I felt inside.
A couple of days before our departure, the seas started to calm. I walked down at sunrise and enjoyed the colors. I took a lot of photos from our balcony. I did spend a lot of time in the hot tub every evening. We enjoyed some white wine and the sound of the surf and the salt water spraying our faces. I enjoyed coffee at sunrise. I started to see that the area might be pretty if the sun came out. In my defense, it was not pretty in cloud cover--it was angry and uninviting. The beach situation didn't improve much, and there was barely room to put up a beach chair. We didn't really enjoy the clientele at Outer Banks, we have to say. Hard drinking fat middle agers smoking and wearing the American flag as bathing suits.
I did read two really good books ("The Good Girl's Guid to Getting Lost" by Rachel Friedman and "Wild Game" by Adrienne Broduer), and we did enjoy our together time. We visited The Wright Brothers national monument, and I enjoyed the f-15s roaring over the shore, I suppose from Seymour-Johnson AFB. It brought back memories.
So the good was the few pretty sunrises, our hot tub, good books, and being together. And we know for sure now that we don't want to live there.
For all my complaining here, I will say that I managed some pretty pictures!
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