Monday, October 17, 2011

I wanna be there...

...Wanna go back down and lie beside the sea there
With a tin cup for a chalice, fill it up with good red wine
And I'm a chewin' on a honeysuckle vine
-Jimmy Buffett, "Tin Cup Chalice"

***There were 3 songs I thought would be good intros for this anniversary trip. So as not to waste good musical inspiration, you get the 3 part blog post. Here's Anniversary Post, Part 2. Find Part 1 here, and tune in for part 3 tomorrow.***

This song is perfect because the 10th anniversary traditional gift is tin or aluminum.  Weird, I know.  I think 10 years ought to be worth more than aluminum, but whatevs.  The song is beach + tin cup + red wine ... pretty much sums up the weekend in my book.

(Why does the decor in B&B places always have to be so grandma-ish?!)


Cheezily romantic OBX tourist attractions?  We hit them all.

(Lighthouse #1 - Hatteras.  Iconic symbol of NC - check.
It really was as beautiful as the postcards indicate. )


(Lighthouse #2 - Bodie.  More scenic than Hatteras in my opinion.
Nearly carried off by mosquitoes.  Us, not the lighthouse.  Though there were
enough of them to move large objects for sure.)


(Sunset from the top of Jockey's Ridge.
Does it get any more cheezily romantic than that?!)

 
(I love you as long as our shadows.)

(If you look closely, you can see the sand blowing across the dune.)

(Approximately half of our pics looked something like this.
The wind was unreal.  I now understand why it's a good place
 to try to fly the world's first airplane!)

(We even got up early to see the sunrise.  Well worth it - it was gorgeous.
But does the cheesy romance ever end?!)


So you're thinking "Aww, this sounds like a perfect trip."  One of my great fears is that my blog - and therefore my life - might be misconstrued as one of those Life is Perfect places where unicorns dance under rainbows.  And really, I did actually post a picture of a rainbow on my first entry.  I'm veering dangerously close to dancing unicorn territory.  Where's the hitch?

Well, there were a few.  And they aligned themselves so perfectly within 3 hours to be pretty dang funny, if they weren't so exasperating.

We'd asked for advice from about things we should do while in the Outer Banks.  My facebook friend KMK suggested a lovely place to stay and a couple of great restaurants which we didn't manage to squeeze in while we were in those areas.  New friends AC and DC (geez - I never realized their names were so perfectly electric!) both suggested Duck Donuts, which sounded great.  We planned to go there for a snack on Saturday. And our trusty Our State magazine from a few issues back gave us 100 Foods You Must Eat in NC - one from each county.  We've made it our quest to eat all 100 of these foods (though we are a really, really long way from getting there).  100 foods included Oceanfront Grille at Corolla Light Resort which was our plan for Saturday lunch.

Disappointment #1 - Oceanfront Grille doesn't serve lunch.  And even if it did, it closed for the season a week prior.  So we went to Harris Teeter, got ourselves a sandwich picnic, and found a lovely pier on the sound.  Mild bummer, but no huge loss.

Disappointment #2 - Headed to Duck Donuts for dessert.  It closed at 1:00.  We arrived at 1:53.  Forehead slap.  A very brief time with Google could have prevented both of these.  We were both pretty bummed about missing out on DD and spent the next 24 hours searching in vain for a cup of coffee and some form of cupcake/pastry/sweet treat.

Disappointment #3 - Our 100 Foods guide gave us a place on the way home that looked like it might just be the ideal pastry/coffee place to get our sweet tooth fix.  We found it - and found it closed.  Like permanently.  Seriously?!  Could these eating establishments work with me here?

Hey - looking on the bright side, we've already got a long list of places to eat at next time we go.  And we learned that it's wise to verify that such places are actually open BEFORE getting our heart set on dining there.

Tomorrow's update - the wild horses of Currituck.  Hey, is that the sound of horse hoofbeats I hear ... or unicorns?!

2 comments:

dwight said...

So jealous. I love the northern outer banks.

Did you go to Manteo? There's a good coffee shop there. Which bridge brought you to Roanoke Island? The Virginia Dare bridge and the Umstead bridge are my favorite places to bike in this state.

I used to live within sight of both of those bridges, and now I just pine away thinking of my time out there.

Jen F. said...

Dwight - I don't know bridge names! We came into Manteo on Hwy 64, and we left Corolla heading the northern route via 158 and 17 through Edenton. So perhaps we hit them both?!

I did think of you, remembering a pic you posted as you rode across some gigantic bridge on your bike. I was pretty impressed!

And we also got to experience "New Inlet Bridge" - the temporary thing that opened a week or so ago. Scared the mess out of me. Not a good long-term solution, but I'm glad it was built in time for me to see Hatteras.