Week at Oak Island

2019-08-16, Friday

We’ve spent the last 6 days at the beach for our annual family vacation on Oak Island, NC. It has been a lovely week— spending a lot of time with the family and friends, snuggling the baby, swimming in the bathtub warm ocean, and eating incredible meals Joe has been making for our pleasure (and at our command.) Today, our last day, turned out to be overcast with quite a bit of rain, although we are holding out hope for a last opportunity to swim before dinner. It doesn’t look very hopeful, though.

Luckily the house we are renting this year is so wonderful, we are all completely comfortable hanging out inside. It is a brand new house, built a couple of years ago, with 6 bedrooms (each with its own bathroom), including a great room for the 5 and 7 year old kids with two bunk beds. The kitchen is very nicely appointed, although we’ve been frustrated that it is lacking a teakettle (of course we have one in the RV, for all the good that does) and a few other items such as a dish drainer. But it is QUITE large and airy, and higher up off the ground, and then, the living room/dining room/kitchen area is on the top floor, which gives us a bird’s eye view of the beach. There are TWO outdoor showers, lots of comfortable furniture, a wine refrigerator, and a recessed deck on both levels, with couches on them so we can really relax while staying in the shade outside. All in all, we totally have loved the place.

Our fully stocked wine refrigerator

 We are already doing our final laundries (I wouldn’t pass up this opportunity) and Joe and I will certainly plan to make good use of the hot showers again at least once before we leave. We’ll probably do as much packing as possible tonight also. Tomorrow’s hectic schedule is: Wake up early, have breakfast, pack the Jeep, do as much house cleaning as possible before we leave at 9:30. 9:30– leave house and head for RV storage lot (~25 minutes). Open up RV, air out some of the heat, and then drive back along the same road to the Lowes parking lot we used last week. Then, either a) quickly transfer cargo to the RV or b) leave cargo in Jeep, park the Jeep, and drive the RV in order to pick up Cassie before 11 a.m.  Then we will come back to the Lowes, unpack the beach cargo into the appropriate RV storage areas, reattach the Jeep to the RV. Unless, that is, it happens to be close to noon by that time, in which case we will probably take the Jeep to the BBQ House for lunch before leaving Oak Island.

Relaxing afternoon

We’ll then head west to Raleigh, where we are parking for the night at the NC State Fairgrounds. This will be our first Fairground overnight (there are many fairgrounds in the country where you can do this) and it has full hookups, I believe, although all we really care about at this point is electricity. We are spending the night there so we can go to a celebration of Dot and Ed’s 70th anniversary. Their daughter, Margie, was my bff when we were growing up (and she still is!), and Dot and Ed were best buddies with Joe’s parents too. So our families are very fond of each other, and we, as well as Beth and Joe and the baby, are so happy to be able to celebrate the anniversary with them. Their son, Dan, and his wife also own an RV and will be spending the night at the fairgrounds too. We’re hoping to pick their brains a little bit about their trip last year to Alaska, which is something we may be interested in for some future trip. But in any case, the day will be LONG and busy, and we have a lot to do before we tuck ourselves in tomorrow night.