Our Three Twelve Hour Tour

We all got a little too much sun yesterday. I failed to reapply sunscreen to Jackson's Vitiligo patches and they're really burnt. He has absolutely no pigment; no protection there and I know better. Anyway, because we were all a little sunned-out, I decided to take the kids into Kitty Hawk to the Wright Brothers National Memorial. (BTW, "Kitty Hawk" has to be said like "kitty cat" with a British accent. I'm not sure why, but apparently it has something to do with Wizards of Waverly Place and it's the only way Austin and Savannah will say it.)

So, after a 45 minute drive, we got there. The kids got out of the van, complained they were hot and bored. I snapped 3 pictures, used the bathroom, and we left. Fun.

But I really didn't want to go back and fry at the beach all day again, so instead of heading back, I turned the other way and continued to drive south. I'm a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kinda gal, so I was sure we could find something fun to do. My plan (yes, I'm calling it a plan. Folks who fly by the seat of their pants can consider

"driving that way until you find something" a plan. It's in the membership brochure.) was to drive until something fun jumped out at us.

On the map, the Outer Banks looks to be about the size of an eyelash. Seriously. It's tiny. You'd think you could drive from one end to the other in like 20 minutes. You'd be wrong. The Outer Banks is a strip of land that's about 5 million miles long. It'll take you at least a week to go from one end to the other. At least that's what my kids would tell you if you asked them.

So I drove. And drove. And drove. And finally (after, literally, hours) we got to the Bodie Island lighthouse. I had wanted to take pictures of it. It was being renovated.

Lovely.

So I looked at the map again and saw there was another lighthouse that, according to my expert calculations, was 5 minutes away. Five minutes, an hour and a half, almost the same thing. We passed through Rodanthe which made me think of Nicholas Sparks. Then I remembered that he lives in North Carolina. I considered trying to stalk him, but figured it probably wouldn't be good to get arrested out of state. I mean, I learned my lesson after the Paula Deen incident when I asked her a few too many questions about her sons at BlogHer last year. (I still can't come within 500 feet of her.)

We finally made it to Hatteras where we drove onto a ferry that took us to Ocracoke.

I drove off the ferry and the kids all said, "Why are we here?"

"I don't know. I thought it would be something fun to do."

"We drove all this way for nothing???"

"Well, we got to listen to you guys complain and Jackson

fight with Clay the whole way. That's something. We counted 58 Wings souvenir shops. We saw Pea Island (hee hee). And, oh look kids, horses!"

"Can we go home?"

"YES!"

I got back in line for the ferry. Meanwhile, the kids played Miami Ink.

We finally got back to the beach house at 10:00 at night.

I don't care how burnt anyone is, we're not driving anywhere until we have to check out. I will be spending the next two days lying on the beach, drinking rum, and relaxing if it kills me.