Tailgates and Tanlines: Final Day @ The Beach

Well unfortunately, all good things must come to an end! But we had a great last day, and perfect weather to round out the week. We spent our last day nearly all together; unfortunately Andrew and Meredith had to work on a paper for class, and my mom decided to stay back at the beach house and relax, but Josh, Morgan, me, my dad, Cheryl and Michael, and Katie and Scott and their families all went to the other lighthouse on the island, the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. It's the tallest lighthouse in North America, I think it was 252 "ish" steps. But we made it to the top! Between that and the Bodie Island Lighthouse, I definitely got in a little bit of my cardio workout for the week, to offset all that great vacation food! We took lots of pictures of course, and since Cheryl and Michael are not big fans of heights, we now have proof that they made it all the way to the top! After the lighthouse, Cheryl, Michael, their kids, Josh, Morgan, and I went to eat at Dirty Dick's Crabhouse for a delicious lunch, then stopped at the Scotch Bonnet fudge store (yum!). Afterwards, we dropped Morgan off at the house so she could go to the beach with everyone else, and Josh and I walked around the shopping center down by the Okracoke Ferry, and bought a few souvenirs before coming back to the beach to hang out with everyone for one last time! After everyone had gotten in a few last hours of beach fun, we had dinner and watched all the photo DVDs that we hadn't seen yet. And of course, my mom's pictures included quite a few pictures of me growing up that I would've been okay with not seeing haha! But they were definitely fun for a laugh. And it was great seeing pictures of my dad when he was younger, and Cheryl and Katie growing up.

Josh and I had planned to leave on Saturday at 4am so we could get back to Leesburg before noon; we rented a car for the week, and the car place closed at noon. But we left a little late Monday to get to the beach, and I was concerned we might not get home in time, thanks to traffic, or if I accidentally overslept. Even though we were leaving so early, everyone else on the island would be leaving that same day, and I did NOT want to hit traffic! So we decided we might as well leave Friday night instead, since we'd be saying bye to everyone on Friday night anyway, so it wouldn't make much of a difference. Although in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have driven 8 hours from 10pm - 6am after being up all day since 7:30am lol. It cost an extra $15 a day to have another driver on the rental car, so I was the only one who could drive the car (I'm better at staying up at 4am than Josh is, so it made more sense for me to be the one to drive). Soooo I was a little tired on the way home, that's for sure. But a 3am stop at Waffle House in Ashland fixed that! What better way to round off a week of eating junk food than greasy $5 diner food??

All in all, we had such a great week. And I'm really glad Morgan was able to come, it was worth missing a couple days of the trip for her to be there! In fact, the last day she BEGGED for us to stay until 4am on Saturday as we had originally planned. It worked out really well that she is the same age at my nieces and nephews so she had lots of people to hang out with. It was so great to be able to see my brother and sisters and their families as well. Hopefully we will all be able to get together again in the future!

The Wyer Family in front of the lighthouse: