Sunday, August 22, 2010

Outer Banks

We took the boys to the outer banks for a few days. And what kind of a trip would it be if Mom didn't give any history lesson along the way? We had to visit the Wright Brother's memorial and learned about the two brothers experience with the airplane. I love those guys. Air travel is great!


We wanted to take the boys to a fun sand dune area called Jockey Ridge State Park where there is a lot of hang gliding and sand surfing and with what Isaiah called a kite festival. Next time we will let the boys stay there for a lot longer than we had and let them get pretty dirty. It was rainy and we had already traveled four and a half hours to get there not to mention that we hadn't eaten dinner and it was starting to rain. We were amazed that there could be a place where the sand is still there because of the opposite winds that keep the sand in place.




We can now claim to be expert crabbers! We wanted to try something new with the boys and we'll just say that we are going to be doing this again. On the eastern coast they are known for their blue crabs. And so we went to a sea food restaurant to try some and after the experience we decided to catch and release. All you have to do is get a piece of string, frozen chicken neck and a long net. Attach the neck to the string, drop into water and wait about two minutes. Watch as you carefully pull on line and reach under crab with net. We were able to catch about 15-20 crabs in the hour and a half that we were there. The boys weren't ready to go when it was time. But we had a lot to do while we were there. Danna and Braxton did some ghost crabbing along the beach at night. They were out for about two hours with flashlights finding crabs that come out along the shore. Braxton had himself set up with his night vision binoculars and walkie talkies so that he could let Dad know exactly what was going on while he was out. We chased quite a lot of crabs with flashlights until finally they had had enough and buried themselves under the sand. What a blast!




We spent the day at Kitty Hawk beach and had a blast. Braxton in the past had complained about the waves not being big enough, but he wasn't complaining here. He kept telling us that we shouldn't let Isaiah get into the water because it was too rough. It took Braxton a little while to warm up to the boogie boards. But closer to the shore he did a fabulous job.



On our way home, we decided that we had a little bit of time to go to the Lost Colonies and tour the Elizabethan II ship how interesting! The boys even got to try on some armor.