© 2019 Rachel L. Shumate | All rights reserved.
Well… As my mom once put it, “if it weren’t for BAD luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all…” I suppose this could be true, but I prefer the description of quirky luck instead. Perhaps this is why my life motto has always been: as bad as it is, it could always be much worse so be thankful that it’s not! I do my best to roll with the punches. Besides, when I recount my tales of “luck” to folks after the fact, the stories usually provide a good bout of incredulous laughter. So at least I’m entertaining if nothing else.
As my luck would have it, we decided to go to the beach early this year – just in time for Hurricane Arthur to join us. Usually we vacation in September when hurricanes are actually in season, but fortunately we’ve never had our trips truly affected by them. I understand Arthur was rather premature so evidently it was a surprise to everyone. Leave it to us to jinx the whole east coast of North Carolina in midsummer.
Truth be told, it wasn’t bad. I’ve seen worse storms and there wasn’t even a real threat of evacuation where we were staying. However, if we had gone to the Outer Banks (one of our favorite spots) we would indeed have gotten hammered and would have had to go home. Fortunately, we went to Ocean Isle Beach this year and the hurricane missed us. So needless to say we were just fine and stayed indoors and waited the wind and rain out. Our parents, however, were most distraught over the situation, to say the least, as they watched the Weather Channel and fretted over the Doppler radar. I suspect they were mostly concerned about Olivia haha. In fact, my mother-in-law did not find it at all humorous that we took Olivia for a walk on the beach to look at the ocean during a lull in the storm. …For the record, it wasn’t raining.
At any rate, it didn’t last long and the sun came out the next morning, so we really only lost one day on the beach. Unfortunately for Kendall that was one of his two days that he was free. Sometimes owning your own business is rewarding, but overrated. I’ve never known him to be able to go on vacation and not have to work at least a day or two during our stay. However, to be sure, we made the most out of the one sunny day that all of us were able to enjoy on the beach together!
It was our first visit to Ocean Isle Beach and it was pretty nice. I don’t think it will beat out any of my top beach favorites, but it was a neat location. Basically, as long as I’m ocean front I’m happy as a clam. One of the nice things about the area was that you could walk to a wide variety of stores, restaurants, ice cream shops, and so forth, eliminating the need to pile up in the car and go to dinner or get a snack… or a pair of sunglasses if you are as forgetful as Kendall. I found that aspect very appealing. I even trudged through the rain during the storm to satisfy a major caffeine craving and got a latté at the coffee shop across the road. Not only was it yummy, you’ll note how impressed I was with the presentation since I even took a picture of it – much to the amusement of the staff.
In all it was a good trip. I think Kendall is already insisting on planning an additional trip in the upcoming months so he can hopefully take a work-free vacation that he can actually enjoy. …Fine by me!
