banannie

Last week we headed down to Duck in the Outer Banks of North Carolina for the second year in a row to spend some time with family and friends. It’s a long, convoluted story I won’t go into right now, but basically a group of my sister-in-law’s friends began to travel to Duck every year, and as time wore on more “hangers on” joined up, including us. Depending on who was counting there were either 17 or 21 families there this year.

It’s a great trip. We all stay near to each other in huge homes of two or more families, a short stroll to the beach (some even staying on the beach.) The younger kids have playmates, the teens have freedom, and the adults lay on the beach all day and party every night.

It’s not perfect. Unfortunately our cousin (and vacation house-mate) had a medical issue that completely disrupted his family’s stay (but he’s recovering and all is well now.) Some of the teens take advantage of the freedom, some of the younger kids hit a wall of exhaustion. And sometimes the neighbors don’t appreciate karaoke on the driveway at 10pm and call the police. It’s a nine hour drive from here each way, which makes a 2 week stay very tempting. The price keeps that a dream, of course.

But despite the few drawbacks, it’s one helluva good time. We pack as much fun and sun into those seven days as in the entire rest of the year. I even took a refreshing break from the internet, despite the fact that I’d brought my Macbook along. Just checked my email a few times and used it to prove via snopes.com that the moon and Mars will not be 35 miles apart on August 27 (yes, this was a serious discussion one night.)

For one week, you wish you were me.