Life on the Road Less Traveled: Away From It All in the Outer Banks

21 July 2013

Away From It All in the Outer Banks

During the 4th of July holiday week, Colin, Darwin and I were able to join some of his friends at a beach house in the Outer Banks. It was a little nerve-wracking because we had to rent a 4x4 vehicle for the week since the house was located off the beach road north of Corolla, NC. When the car rental offices told me they couldn't guarantee a 4x4 in an SUV category, I freaked out a little bit, but thankfully it all worked out. It's good that you can reserve vehicles from multiple locations without putting down a credit card.

On Saturday morning, we packed up the Ford Escape rental and set out on the 4 hour drive. Well, the drive should have taken about 4 hours, but once we got to the northern beaches in the Outer Banks (or OBX), we were at a crawl for the 20+ miles to the very northern tip. Since the weather was crappy (raining), we didn't feel too bad for the delay. And, we can't complain considering our friends hit that same traffic after driving over 16 hours from upstate New York!

As we drove on the sand (hoping not to get stuck), and made our way to the house, we were instantly greeted by a bunch of wild horses. They were just walking around, grazing on the grass around the house like people didn't bother them. I didn't get any great pictures of them the first day, be we say them throughout the week and managed to get pictures later on.

View of the horses on the beach from the patio

Horses making their way towards the house

Horses almost trampling the kids!

The house was moderately sized for our group and nicely laid out. All 4 bedrooms were on the lower level and the upper level contained the living room, kitchen, and patio. The best part, was the amazing view to the ocean from the patio. It was nice to be situated slightly away from the beach, especially with all the 4x4 trucks passing back and forth, while still being able to see and hear the ocean.

Our house was the second from the left (blue)

Our first two days at the beach weren't that great. It was cloudy most of the day and we had some rain on and off. The first day was fine because most needed the day to recover from the long drive the previous day, but everyone was ready for the beach by day 2. Thankfully, the middle of the week brought better weather with only scattered clouds and storms. By the end of the week, we had clear blue skies and lots of sun! It was actually really nice to have a mix of weather. It forced Colin and I to relax and allowed us to not get burned by being in the sun all week. I'm sure Darwin also appreciated the not-so-hot weather early in the week. Even on the cloudy days we managed to get two long walks in on the beach. Darwin had the experience of being good, but also not being a push-over with Colin's friends two pitbulls (one male, one female). There were a few times they got a bit aggressive with each other, and we kept them separate from each other a lot, but by mid-week they seemed to be able to hang out in the same room without bothering each other.

6 adults, 4 kids, 3 dogs couped up together for the first few days

Darwin, Luke, and Cooper getting along

One of the things that surprised me the most was that everyone was into cooking and eating good meals all week. Our dinner menus included chicken kabobs pork, ribs steak, grouper, shrimp and lobster. We pretty much made a full course dinner every night. It helped that the guys liked to grill and the ladies helped with the sides. It also would have taken too long to drive to town, especially on the sand in the dark! I wish I had taken pictures of our dinners because they were so impressive.

One of the several beautiful sunsets

The guys grilling chicken kabobs

The only down side of the trip was that we did manage to get stuck in the sand in our 4x4. By the end of the week, the sand was really dry and some spots had really deep tire tracks. Colin wanted me to practice driving on the sand and it was pretty nerve-wracking on the way to town (we needed some groceries). I tried the same route on the way back and managed to get stuck! The $165 tow was pretty steep, and it was a hot and miserable 45 minutes of waiting to get pulled out, but it was better than being left stranded. Next time we will take the advice of the locals and deflate our tires to almost half and we'll drive closer to the water where the sand is packed down!

This is where we should have been driving!

I'll leave you with some pictures of our fun in the sun. I don't know who had more fun running around at the water's edge - Colin or Darwin. I will tell you that Darwin still doesn't think the waves at the ocean are fun at all. And unfortunately, the water was pretty cold where we were for the week (in the 60's). We'd been to the beach in southern NC earlier this summer and the water was much warmer. I don't know if we were just in a pocket of cold water, but I only went in on the last two days when it was really hot on the beach!