Yes, this was from July/August 2016 !!
This was another unusual year in that I again took two consecutive weeks of vacation. And thank God that I did !!! We were in the middle of a project at work that without a doubt was/is/will be the worst assignment I have ever had with this company. The timing of my vacation ensured that I would not be involved in the last two weeks of the project.
The first week of vacation we would be at home and so I took a lot of frozen meat out of the freezer to cook during the week and use that as an opportunity to clean out the freezer a bit.
Mmmmmm, frozen meat.
Now the bad part is that my brother had a graduation party for his son and daughter and there was a bit of leftover, uncooked hamburger that was sent home with me. So along with the above frozen meat, I now had an extra 12 hamburgers to cook and eat for the week. And to compound the overmeatage situation, my daughter ended up being gone with a cousin for four days of that week. But I did manage !!
The previous year when we went to New Bern, NC, we (I mean me) drove straight through. That was way too much driving and this time I bit the bullet and stayed at a hotel coming and going. I don’t like adding an extra $200 and two days to the trip but had to do it.
We stayed at a nice place in New Bern and the town itself was great for food and walking around in, but it was an hour each way everyday to get to the beach. Not a big deal but it did put limits on being able to be more spontaneous and such. So I decided that regardless of what the extra cost would be, we were going to stay on the island and be closer to the beach. It didn’t take long to figure out that there were some nice places to stay, but most were designed for large family’s or groups. When dividing the cost per family, it’s very reasonable (even for a cheap bastard like myself.) Soooooooooooooooooo I had the idea to suggest to the wife that we have her brother’s family in DC and her parents meet use on the island for a family vacation.
I knew well ahead of time that there could be a great downside to that idea.
We ended up with:
Mother in law
Father in law
brother in law
sister in law
nephew
Aunt
Along with the three of this us.
It wasn’t without difficulties, but it wasn’t too bad !!
I hundreds of pictures of our beach trips but most of them are about the same so I’ll just post a few:
Food:
On vacations, I usually don’t eat more than one meal a day. This year because we were with the rest of the family, we mostly bought groceries and made dinners at our beach house. But we did eat out a couple of times when we were far from the beach house our just to dang tired to cook.
The year before we ate at “Howard’s Pub” on Ocracoke Island and we did the same this year.
I ordered the “Po Boy.” Just like last year’s lunch here, it was great ! Very fresh and not at all greasy.
Shocking but my daughter ordered the chicken tenders.
The wife ordered a crab cake sandwich. Big chucks of crab. Yummo.
It was around 2 pm one afternoon and we were coming back from somewhere we decided to get a sandwich at Bros which was about a mile away from where the beach house was.
Those were both $10 sandwiches. The service was very slow and the sandwiches were “meh.” Doubt I would recommend it or go there again.
On the trip last year and this year, once we got to the West Virginia area, I saw a lot of billboards for “Bojangles.” We didn’t stop last year but did this year on our return trip going through Princeton, WV.
I got the “Roasted Chicken Bites.” Dang, they were OK but for some reason I thought they were going to be BBQ. But, the biscuit????? FANTASTIC !!!! I could have an entire meal of just the biscuits.
The wife and daughter both got the chicken tenders. There are very few times when eating at a fast food chain that you can actually say “WOW!!” when you eat something. But by an agreement with all of us, these were literally the best chicken tenders we had ever eaten.
Activities:
Of course finding sea glass was on the agenda at all times. More was found this year than last year but there still was not a lot found. This was the best piece found:
The Sister-in-Law found a DNR program that let people seine in the Pamlico Sound and they explained what we caught.
Pamlico Sound is very warm and shallow. There’s a good chance that you could walk from Hatteras to the mainland. It’s a great place for spawning water life.
Here the wife and daughter are seining critters.
The marine biologist student explains what was caught. She looked at me funny when I asked if there was any drawn butter.
My daughter and her cousin out trying to catch more.
Things we brought home:
What’s a family vacation if you don’t bring home some crap??!!??
Actually we didn’t bring much home with us.
The Hatteras Island chain has more tourist trap stores full of chintzy spoo than anywhere else except the Wisconsin Dells !
Some bacon related Examples:
Does everyone have a crazy cat lady in their life?
A couple of great six packs. These were each $10.99. On the high end but really good beer.
One of the best souvenir places we stopped at was “Scotch Bonnet.”
They had some really good Taffy.
Also while in Princeton, WV where we stopped at Bojangles for lunch, we went to “Jerky Outlet”. The bacon jerky was good. The crickets really didn’t have any taste other than “crunchy.” My daughter ate two of them.
Bacon Time !!!!!! 