Labor Day Weekend On The Outer Banks With Family 31Aug23-04Sep23

31Aug23 - I picked up MLC on the way to DEN for our flight to Raleigh to meet up with Kala, Karla, Kevin and the Kousins, Tari & Jari. The SW flight to Raleigh was easy despite my very late clickthrough for a boarding pass number ~ I was last to board the 737 Max. Once meeting up the Kevin and the Mariettas (good band name), the team dined at Chows in Raliegh with good brews and food. After Kyle very unfortunately came down with strep, Matt chose to rent an MX5 on Turo for the trip to the beach and running around while at the Outer Banks. It was a fun car with track brakes and a convertible hard top; it was tiny but zippy... I rode with Matt on the last leg to the Atlantic; we arrived 1st after some criticism on my arrival to the lunch spot Georgia Dean's at the halfway point.

01Sep23 - On arrival to the Outer Banks near Kill Devil Hill we went to the Wright Brothers Memorial. It was very cool and showed, as typical, a constant 10mph, consistently 90° to shore, wind aligned perfectly to the Wright Bros launch rail, flight paths, and the memorial statue. Kevin mentioned the visitor center is relatively new and it was pretty informative on the history, significance, and other aspects of the Wright Bros. Their breakthroughs in twisting the airfoil with new controls was THE significant contribution allowing controllable flight. We take it for granted now but when higher flight speeds were less attainable and aerodynamics were Prandtl-ian (father of boundary layer physics); getting it right here was historic. They referenced genius and maybe true but the brothers' scientific approach and trial & error engineering was at least also solid science.

The 8 bed house on the beach is awesome (3 of the beds are kid-beds but the rest are masters)... main floor is gathering spot with the best views... Kala and I "only" had direct access to the beach and the hot tub. It was awesome. I shot some initial pics from the deck, over the ocean, of the house, pan of house + surf, etc. Cool... surf was up and swimming was prohibited as rip tides were prevalent over the LD WE.

02Sep23 - For our first full day on OBX we had booked a tour of the far north to find wild horses that remain from a crashed Spanish ship 500 yrs ago. The herd is ~100 running free but now very much among human residential development. Sure there are rules posted everywhere about how to treat them and they are monitored but not tagged; they've grown naturally from 80 or so 5 years ago to over 100 so a decent management of residents (and vaca homes ~ we passed The Rock's house in Corova in the far north). For the last 20 miles or so northbound from Duck, the road, #12, is on the beach, passable mostly low or high tide, but always on shifting sand. We crossed through Fed wildland, a serious beach party district on Labor Day WE, a no-stop zone (it blocks up travel), the last house of four which built out on the beach too far (it's sure to break down soon), and a sand-or-canal access only area with killer new homes of the rich & famous. It was cool and we encountered a number of the horses, and our guide was good and informative... but I also thought it a real estate tour. I participated via Redfin and Zillow and it wasn't that bad... ~$2M for some nice beachfront villas, I do hang in Summit Co, CO after-all. We rolled back from the beach to the ridgeline and a couple of sinkholes full of fresh water just 1/4 mile from the ocean ~ that was refuge for the wild horses. The ridgeline of scrub oak and persimmon trees was protection and travel for the horses during the recent hurricane miss. Before the wild horse tour we did find a decent beer garden right next door to our embarkation point.

We then followed a Norsworthy vacation tradition of ice cream, and a Coffin vacation tradition of craft beer. The ice cream servings were ginormous and the craft beer taps and other selections at Growlers To Go, next door, were excellent. I really like local brewer 1718 and of course picked up some Burial as well while in NC. Karla led making excellent dinner back at the house that evening and I caught a cool pic of moonrise.

03Sep23 - Sunday brought jet skiing on the sound (no pics - didn't take phone out there) and a day at the beach. Jet's were nice and bombed 55mph across pretty choppy water due to some crowding. I spent sometime slaloming the crab trap buoys and Kevin & Matt were chasing down the wind. We dined at Roadside Bar & Grill on decent nosh. And then hit the beach for people watching, mesmerizing waves, kite flying, crab spying, and a few toes in the surf. Karla prepped another great meal and we trundled off after seeing FSU handle LSU.

04Sep23 - MLC needed to leave early for a visit with his recovering cousin Kyle in Chapel Hill and to drop off the car and get to RDU for a flight home. The rest of us took a chill day around the house and I actually got to do the blog entry for the weekend. It was a very good one even though we missed Kyle. The retired of the team will be here the rest of the week, woohoo!