Vacationing With Family

The Outer Banks – An Ideal Destination

My husband and I just went on our first “real” vacation since our honeymoon five years ago and…we invited our family to come along?!?! Strangely, both my family and my in-laws all get along, very, very well.

We rented a house, Afternoon Delight, in the Outer Banks from Twiddy in the Corolla, NC area. We stayed on the northern most part of the Outer Banks – about 7 miles past where the road ended. Well, actually, the road did not end but the pavement turned into a wide-open beach and that was our road into town for the week, which is only accessible by 4 wheel drive vehicles. On the journey to the beach the first crew of people almost ran our jeep into some wild horses…which truly are not that wild anymore. (My mother may or may not have broke the “stay at least 100 feet from the horses” law and actually pet one). Everyone in the jeep was pretty excited to see the wild horses on the first day. By the end of the week the horses were just part of the scenery. You could walk right past them, they’d walk up to you, and if you were crazy lucky enough, you may or may not even manage to pet a few! The vacation involved a lot of eating, cocktails, walking, bocce ball, pool, and reading. Although we were quite isolated on the beach, our accommodations were first class…we even had wireless Internet!

We had all decided that since there were seven of us on this trip and we were going to be vacationing for seven nights, everyone would be responsible for planning one meal. We ate well! Yummy shrimp with a peanut, cilantro dressing, Pete’s BBQ chicken, grilled grouper, juicy burgers, fettuccini, steak, pasta with a portabella mushroom red gravy, and…

Fresh crabs. The last night of our stay we ordered a bushel of crabs from Carova Beach Crab and Seafood. Live crabs were delivered right to our beach house and were steamed in a bath of Old Bay Seasoning. Once the mound of crabs was piled onto our table we all saw the challenge that lay ahead, and immediately knew we were NOT going to eat all of them. Although we did a commendable job, we did not finish them.

We are already planning our next vacation to OBX! There are so many wonderful destinations, I can’t decide if I want to go back to the same exact location or explore a new area. Regardless, the Outer Banks are an ideal destination for a family vacation and we will return!