Summer's the Time for Vacation, or a Love Letter to NC

I love reading others' blogs (invited or not, heh) about their travel plans. Growing up, vacation only meant one thing for me: Nags Head, NC. It fascinates me to see all of the choices people have made to go on vacation. What?! There are places that don't have beaches attached that you can go in the summer?! The coastlines aren't the only tourist attractions in May through September?!?!


I have a truly spoiled, reason for this way of thinking: my grandmother owned a cottage directly across from the beach in the Outer Banks of NC, and that was the obligatory destination for our yearly family outings. We'd pack the full-sized Bronco to bursting, full of me, my sisters, towering stacks of puzzle books and storybooks (which later graduated to chapter books, then to full-fledged novels), more pillows and blankets than fifty grown men would require, and fruit snacks and Bugles (remember those?!). The seven-hour drive seemed to stretch for days in the back of that hot, sun-filled car. The first thing we would do, before unpacking the car, before running to the bathroom, before saying hello to whichever relatives might be there at the time, was to run across the road and straight onto the sand, take a deep breath, and relish in the fact that for another week, we were THERE. Where we belonged.



Since then, much has changed: they tore down the old, tiny, drafty cottage with no actual bathroom inside (you had to go outside to an attached bathroom - but you were at the be ac! Who cared?!) and replaced it with a much more glamorous version with quadruple the space and nice tall stilts to ward off flooding in hurricane season.
My grandfather has since passed away and my grandmother has signed over the deed to the cottage to my father and his two sisters, but ownership never mattered. Anyone was - and is - welcome, regardless of space. I've been there many a time when it was just my family of five enjoying the sights and apparent spaciousness of an oversized three-bedroom space, and just as many nights sleeping on a recliner in the living room or in a tent underneath the cottage, while there were approximately twenty other relatives slumbering in equally awkward corners of the home.
My grandfather preferred to sleep on the hammock under the cottage, regardless of how many people were sleeping above him. I am a grown, married woman now, with an extended family of my own to bring down to NC; it was a strange but wonderful experience to see my little sister hanging out with my brother-in-law in this most sacred of childhood haunts for me.

Being pregnant now has prevented us from planning the yearly pilgrimage down there this year; will I feel just as reluctant to take the journey with an infant next year? Or a fussy toddler?
We live five hours farther away now, which means less visits on my part. My grandmother is so old now she doesn't spend Memorial Day through Labor Day in the cottage, and I hate the thought that my children might not know the joy of spending an entire summer living on the coast as I did. Sigh.

This year we've opted for a much shorter two-hour trek to Niagara Falls, which I am definitely looking forward to (I've never been there! Any suggestions for things to do?), as our "last hurrah" vaca before our twosome increases by 50%. While I am definitely excited, I have caught myself more than once wistfully looking over the beach pictures I've collected over the years (some of which I've included in this post). Nags Head, I shall return!