Anyway, enough about boring job stuff and on to more interesting topics, such as the beach! Thankfully, I chose to move to the other side of the country where there are still beaches just a few hours away, so I won't go into coastal withdrawal, just California withdrawal! True to form, my cousins kindly invited me to travel with them to Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, where friends of Tiahna's (my cousin Billy's wife, for those of you that don't know) family own a beach house and let them use it once a year. It's only a short walk down the street to the beach and is split into two units, one upper and one lower. I was lucky enough to get the whole lower unit to myself while my cousins and Tiahna's parents stayed upstairs.
The weather was gorgeous! Fortunately, while there was a storm inland of us, no hurricanes or tropical storms loomed and we were able to enjoy our time at the beach, worry-free! Speaking of that storm, I sat on the deck for over an hour the first night watching the most amazing lightning show I've ever seen! In the distance, just north of us, light constantly flashed and flickered from behind the huge storm clouds and jagged bolts streaked down to the earth below. I couldn't capture it a photo as my timing was always off, but I did manage to get some pretty good video footage, including an awesome lightning bolt toward the end of the video. Check it out!
I got a little ahead of myself in my excitement to talk about the lightning show, but don't worry, I'll start from the beginning. After a 3 hour car ride, we arrived at the beach early Saturday afternoon. We beat Tiahna's parents and decided to take a walk down to the beach to check things out. FYI: Strollers do not roll through sand. We took my cousins' dog Dylan with us as well and let him explore the waves and get over his slight fear of the water. After biting at the first few waves, thinking that they were coming toward him to attack him, he finally got used to the way the ocean works and enjoyed frolicking and getting wet!
Connor hung out in his stroller this time, so it's hard to tell what he thought, but I think he enjoyed himself as well. As usual, I wore my longest shorts and therefore got them soaking wet when I wandered a little too far into the water and got attacked by a wave myself! I think I enjoy going into the water with my clothes on, it's about as rebellious as I get! Crazy Jessa, breaking the rules!After our walk, we met Tiahna's dad back at the house and decided to grab an early dinner at the Channel Marker restaurant, which sits right on the edge of the water, the water being the Bogue Sound, not the Atlantic Ocean, though.
That's because Atlantic Beach is actually on a thin island off the coast separated by the Bogue Sound. I had some yummy shrimp panned in butter because you can't go to the beach without indulging in the seafood. Seafood is always best when had at the beach and the shrimp at the Channel Marker was no exception! Mmm, mmm, good!The rest of the weekend followed much the same as the first night, marked by the yummy food we ate, as all good vacations usually are. The remainder of our time was spent resting, watching a little college football (! can't miss a USC football game, regardless of where I am!), playing in the Atlantic Ocean, relaxing in rocking chairs on the deck, and enjoying each other's company.
On Sunday morning, we grabbed brunch at a buffet at a local joint called Shooters.
All you can eat scrambled eggs and bacon, that's my idea of a good breakfast meal! I even tried some biscuit and gravy at the insistence of my cousin Billy and while I have yet to become a fan of that southern delicacy, at least I tried it. Now that our bellies were full, it was beach time! I know that breaks the rule of swimming after eating, but, hey, like I said before, I'm a rule breaker! After 3 walks along the shore between Wilmington and Atlantic Beach, I was ready to dunk my whole self into the big blue Atlantic Ocean, which is thankfully much warmer than the freezing waters of the Pacific, yet another reason to stay on the east coast for a while. There were some waves to jump over, which made things more fun, but once it calmed down, I got a little bored and decided to head in. We couldn't stay too long anyway since Connor decided to fall asleep in his stroller on the walk over and basically missed the whole beach experience. He's only 9 months old though so he's got plenty of beach weekends to look forward to when he can actually walk into the waves and swim in the ocean and build sandcastles. Until then, I guess I can cut him slack and let him sleep, especially when he's such a cute sleeping baby!Having accomplished my goal of finally swimming in the Atlantic, we dried off and took a ride to check out the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores, just a few minutes down the road from the beach house.
I am definitely a much bigger fan of aquariums than zoos. Unlike zoos where the smells of the animals are unavoidable while wandering past their outdoor enclosures, the fishy smell of the sea creatures is thankfully contained behind the thick glass wall of their big water tanks. Connor seemed to enjoy all the fish, sharks, and jellyfish and it's always fun watching him watch the animals!
And he didn't even seem to mind when we put him in slightly precarious situations for the sake of a memorable photo! He's such a good sport!
As you can see, I had my fun too!
After the Aquarium, we headed back to the house where Tiahna's mom had now joined us for the rest of the weekend. With everyone present and accounted for, it was time for another yummy seafood dinner at a local fav called Amos Mosquitos - with a unique name like that, you just know it's going to be good!
I stuck with my usual shrimp dinner, fried this time, but added fried scallops to the mix, which I had never had before. They were ok, but shrimp is still by far my #1 favorite. I experienced 3 other firsts: fried dill pickles (yum!), fried kalamari (which I think I've had before, but can't remember, so I counted it as a first, and possibly a last), and smores (of course I'd had them before, but never like this and never at a restaurant, very fun!) that we made ourselves using a little bunsen burner/candle/mini barbecue grill contraption to roast our marshmallows! I should have taken a picture of that thing...
I must say that I badly flunked at taking photos this weekend, perhaps I'm just a little camera'd out after all the hundreds of photos I took on my road trip. I didn't think about it at the time, but I'm sorry about it now. Oh well, at least I have the blog to preserve the memories in words if not images. I guess that means I'll have to write an extra long blog because I hear that "a picture is worth a thousand words" and I have a lot of pictures to make up for.
Following dinner, we went back to the house and meandered out onto the deck for some rocking chair relaxing and chit-chatting under the clear starry sky - another bonus about the less populated city of Raleigh and North Carolina in general is that I can see more stars than I even knew existed beyond the thick layer of smog in Los Angeles. There must be something blowing in the ocean breeze, poppy seeds or tryptophan or sleep-inducing sea salt, a combination of which causes me to fall asleep much earlier than usual, before midnight even, while at the beach because after an hour so of hanging out on the deck, I had become very sleepy, so I made my way downstairs to my unit and promptly passed out for the night. Ah, you gotta love beach vacations!
When I opened my eyes again, morning had dawned on Labor Day. You know what that means...yep, it was time for more food, this time at the Four Corners Diner down the street for some breakfast.
I am not a huge fan of pancakes, preferring to stick with my usual eggs, bacon, and toast, but this weekend, I had been going all out and this morning had my second serving of pancakes in as many days, drenched with plenty of delicious maple syrup. Yum! Plus, it was right across the street from a store called Wings which has all kinds of souveneirs, so I was able to get a shot glass to add to my collection that represents my Labor Day weekend at Atlantic Beach.
I had originally thought that we would be leaving shortly after breakfast, but was glad that I was wrong. We decided to stick around a little longer and check out Fort Macon, which is located at the eastern point of the island and dates back to the early 1800s, around the War of 1812.
I am becoming more interested in U.S. history, especially since I started planning my road trip, so this was a cool historic site to check off my long list of sights that I would like to see someday. To be honest, I always imagined a fort being more like a fortress or castle type structure, but instead, learned that this fort is more of a round-shaped, stone structure built somewhat below ground level and made to look like a hill so that from the outside it could not be easily located by the enemy. 
Despite it's unique architecture and appearance, there's not much to look at or explore other than lots of empty stone rooms and only a few cannons left on display on the premises. I think Fort Macon would have been cooler all the cannons that used to line the exterior and interior rings of the structure still remained in place, but perhaps the cannons were no longer there or in tact when the fort was closed or they were taken off the fort to be preserved and displayed in a museum, and I guess I can't fault historians and military officials for that. Fortunately, they left at least one cannon at the top of the fort so I could get a cool photo op out of it!
Fort Macon marked our last stop at the beach. We said goodbye to Tiahna's parents, piled in the car and headed home. However, we did take a little detour from our original route. Tiahna knew that I wanted to take a car ferry and had missed my chance while I was in Wilmington, so she drove a little out of the way so we could ride one that afternoon. We drove onto a ferry boat, the Floyd J. Lupton Ferry, to be exact, at Cherry Branch, NC and floated across a small part of the Pamlico Sound to Minnesott Beach.
After the fun ferry ride, which everyone enjoyed, including Dylan,
we made our way back toward the highway, passing through New Bern along the way, home of my favorite author, Nicholas Sparks (whose new novel, "The Lucky One," is finally releasing on September 30, yay!), and yet another reason to love living in North Carolina and a great excuse for a day trip someday soon to explore the place where the brilliant author gets his inspiration.
And that concludes my fun and relaxing Labor Day Weekend at Atlantic Beach! Hopefully, I'll have more fun times to write about soon, and, if I'm really lucky, I'll have a new job and/or apartment to write about, too! As always, stay tuned!
After the Aquarium, we headed back to the house where Tiahna's mom had now joined us for the rest of the weekend. With everyone present and accounted for, it was time for another yummy seafood dinner at a local fav called Amos Mosquitos - with a unique name like that, you just know it's going to be good!
I stuck with my usual shrimp dinner, fried this time, but added fried scallops to the mix, which I had never had before. They were ok, but shrimp is still by far my #1 favorite. I experienced 3 other firsts: fried dill pickles (yum!), fried kalamari (which I think I've had before, but can't remember, so I counted it as a first, and possibly a last), and smores (of course I'd had them before, but never like this and never at a restaurant, very fun!) that we made ourselves using a little bunsen burner/candle/mini barbecue grill contraption to roast our marshmallows! I should have taken a picture of that thing...I must say that I badly flunked at taking photos this weekend, perhaps I'm just a little camera'd out after all the hundreds of photos I took on my road trip. I didn't think about it at the time, but I'm sorry about it now. Oh well, at least I have the blog to preserve the memories in words if not images. I guess that means I'll have to write an extra long blog because I hear that "a picture is worth a thousand words" and I have a lot of pictures to make up for.
Following dinner, we went back to the house and meandered out onto the deck for some rocking chair relaxing and chit-chatting under the clear starry sky - another bonus about the less populated city of Raleigh and North Carolina in general is that I can see more stars than I even knew existed beyond the thick layer of smog in Los Angeles. There must be something blowing in the ocean breeze, poppy seeds or tryptophan or sleep-inducing sea salt, a combination of which causes me to fall asleep much earlier than usual, before midnight even, while at the beach because after an hour so of hanging out on the deck, I had become very sleepy, so I made my way downstairs to my unit and promptly passed out for the night. Ah, you gotta love beach vacations!
When I opened my eyes again, morning had dawned on Labor Day. You know what that means...yep, it was time for more food, this time at the Four Corners Diner down the street for some breakfast.
I am not a huge fan of pancakes, preferring to stick with my usual eggs, bacon, and toast, but this weekend, I had been going all out and this morning had my second serving of pancakes in as many days, drenched with plenty of delicious maple syrup. Yum! Plus, it was right across the street from a store called Wings which has all kinds of souveneirs, so I was able to get a shot glass to add to my collection that represents my Labor Day weekend at Atlantic Beach.I had originally thought that we would be leaving shortly after breakfast, but was glad that I was wrong. We decided to stick around a little longer and check out Fort Macon, which is located at the eastern point of the island and dates back to the early 1800s, around the War of 1812.
I am becoming more interested in U.S. history, especially since I started planning my road trip, so this was a cool historic site to check off my long list of sights that I would like to see someday. To be honest, I always imagined a fort being more like a fortress or castle type structure, but instead, learned that this fort is more of a round-shaped, stone structure built somewhat below ground level and made to look like a hill so that from the outside it could not be easily located by the enemy. Despite it's unique architecture and appearance, there's not much to look at or explore other than lots of empty stone rooms and only a few cannons left on display on the premises. I think Fort Macon would have been cooler all the cannons that used to line the exterior and interior rings of the structure still remained in place, but perhaps the cannons were no longer there or in tact when the fort was closed or they were taken off the fort to be preserved and displayed in a museum, and I guess I can't fault historians and military officials for that. Fortunately, they left at least one cannon at the top of the fort so I could get a cool photo op out of it!Fort Macon marked our last stop at the beach. We said goodbye to Tiahna's parents, piled in the car and headed home. However, we did take a little detour from our original route. Tiahna knew that I wanted to take a car ferry and had missed my chance while I was in Wilmington, so she drove a little out of the way so we could ride one that afternoon. We drove onto a ferry boat, the Floyd J. Lupton Ferry, to be exact, at Cherry Branch, NC and floated across a small part of the Pamlico Sound to Minnesott Beach.
After the fun ferry ride, which everyone enjoyed, including Dylan,
we made our way back toward the highway, passing through New Bern along the way, home of my favorite author, Nicholas Sparks (whose new novel, "The Lucky One," is finally releasing on September 30, yay!), and yet another reason to love living in North Carolina and a great excuse for a day trip someday soon to explore the place where the brilliant author gets his inspiration.And that concludes my fun and relaxing Labor Day Weekend at Atlantic Beach! Hopefully, I'll have more fun times to write about soon, and, if I'm really lucky, I'll have a new job and/or apartment to write about, too! As always, stay tuned!
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