Nags Head

Last week Rachelle and I went on vacation with my parents and sister to the Outer Banks. I was pleasantly surprised that we had a great house, great weather (for the most part) and no disasters. It's been many years (15+) since my family went down the shore for a week and when we did it usually rained the entire time or we encountered a hurricane or nor'easter.

My parents drove all the way from NJ down to Nags Head, but I couldn't handle a road trip like that, so we flew from Rochester to Richmond where my sister lives. Once in Richmond we would drive down the 4 hours in my sister's car. A few days before we were to leave Rachelle looked on Continental's website and found that they had changed our returning flights! We purposely picked a 5pm flight departing RIC because we had a 4 hour drive before it. They apparently cancelled that flight because it was under-booked and took it upon themselves to put us on the 12pm flight and not notify us! We called to raise some hell and they said they tried to email and call, but they weren't able to reach anyone. Bullshit! Rachelle asked what address and number they tried and they gave the correct ones. I run my own email server; I can tell if you tried to email me. And I never got a missed call or voicemail from them. So I called back later saying I wanted to cancel that part of our flight since they didn't have anything to accommodate us and Delta did. Once they heard that they put us on that Delta flight when the day before there was "nothing they could do."

On the drive down we saw some guy in a Corvette driving sort of erratically and we watched him drift into the left lane and right into an SUV. This guy was obviously drunk or under the influence of something. That was the first time I'd ever seen such a slow-mo accident. At least the guy pulled over and didn't just keep going.

The house was awesome! It had 2.5 bathrooms and 4 bedrooms. All of the rooms had queen beds except for one room which had two sets of bunk-beds, so the whole place could've slept 10. The top floor was a wide open common area with some great views. The downstairs was where all the bedrooms were. The best part was the 7 person hot tub on the top deck. I didn't care if it rained the whole time because I'd sit in the hot tub in the rain. I actually did on one of the days it did rain.

The house was just a few doors down from the beach which was great for dragging all the stuff you need. My dad borrowed one of those tent things (basically just a roof) from a neighbor for shade and it was great. I would've looked like a big lobster if I didn't have adequate shade, and I didn't get sunburned at all. We left the tent on the beach the whole week so we didn't have to keep lugging it around.

The beach was also amazing; it was so clean and was not crowded at all. The Jersey shore was always mobbed and full of crap. I remember one summer medical waste was washing up on beach. One of the days a bunch of dolphins swam really close to the shore and scared the shit out the poor guy who was farthest out in the surf since they looked like sharks at first. Once everyone realized they were dolphins they all ran into the water. I guess nobody though about the fact that big sharks eat dolphins and they could've been there because they were running away from a shark.

The finger lakes (I don't know which ones) as we flew to Richmond.

I don't know where we are here, but I thought it was a good pic.

This was my usual get-up for the whole week. My sister kept trying to steal my hat because it matched her bathing suit and it's the coolest hat ever!

Empty beach on a beautiful day. It was like this most of the time.

Me getting my ass handed to me by the ocean. Note the ridiculous farmer tan.

I thought this was a funny picture...

Right in the middle of this pic are a couple of those dolphins.

My mom (in the chair) and my dad (standing in the surf)

This is Maya, my sister's dog. She is deathly afraid of cameras which is why she's facing the other way. Most of these rental houses don't allow dogs, so we really lucked out with that amazing house that allowed pets.