September 8th Brent, me and Brent's family went to the Outer Banks, North Carolina. We spent a whole week there. It was one of the best vacations I've ever had. We stayed in a 5 bedroom house with a private pool in the backyard. We were about 8 houses down from the ocean. All we had to do was walk about 3 minutes and we were standing on the beach staring at the ocean. Every morning we would get up and go swimming in the pool for some exercise and then we would eat breakfast and head for the beach. Some of the days we were there we just spent all day on the beach and others we went shopping and did a lot of site seeing around the islands. We went out for lunch everyday to different restaurants. In North Carolina it must be law that everything is FRIED because everything on the restaurant menues was dipped in batter and deep fat fried. I think we all gained some weight on that vacation. If you plan on eating out in North Carolina you better be prepared to diet before and after! This was the beach that was down the street from the house we stayed in. It was fairly private; there were only about 20-30 people on the beach as far as we could see.

This is the view from the rear deck of the house facing towards the ocean. If you look closely you can see ocean on the horizon, its just a little darker blue than the sky.

We ate a lot of seafood. Most of it was fried, but these clams weren't. They were steamed. Brent played with the clams after he ate their insides.

This is the view from the rear deck facing the sound side of the island. One of the nights when it rained the small pond just in front of the deck overflowed and filled our street with about a foot of water. We were afraid the water would rise and start getting into our cars but luckily it didn't and by morning there were just large puddles in the street and nothing more.

This was a secluded beach we went to and spent most of a day at. It was very beautiful but very windy. Bella had a great time at this beach. She kept escaping from her leash and harness.

Bella had a great time chasing the seagulls and other birds on the beach, for some reason she thought she would catch them even though they could fly.

Bella also chased the little sand crabs that were everywhere on the beach. She did catch some of them and ate them. What a wierd dog!

Bella didn't much like getting wet but if she was chasing something it didn't seem to bother her. One time she tried to run away from an incoming wave but wasn't fast enough. She looked like a drowned rat when she came up from the water. We had to bath her every night, she would get sand, seaweed, and little briars stuck all over in her hair and she also smelled like sea water so she wasn't very pleasant until we did bath her. She went swimming a couple of times in the pool but only because we threw her in. She didn't like that. But she did like running around the pool as we did laps, barking and growling at the splashes we made.

Brent playing in the water. The whole time we were there he was always trying to body surf and was successful some of the time. I have no idea what he's doing in this picture, he assures me it was something manly.

This is the Cape Hatteras light house, we toured the inside and top of it. It is amazing how high it is! I think it is one of the oldest light houses in the U.S.

Scenery from our beach.

Brent and I built two sand castles while we were there. This may not look like much in the picture but we had built two walls and two motes to help keep out the rising tide. This took us a while and was the better of the two sand castles we built. Alas, there was no trace of it when we went back to check on it in the morning.

Another beach at the end of Hatteras Island.

There were several para-sailers one evening because it was so windy. It was pretty cool to watch them sail up and down on the wind currents. We also watched kayakers out on the ocean, the hardest part for them was getting past the shore line.

This is Brent's pretty smile.
This was inside the Cape Hatteras light house.

This is on the sound side of the Outer Banks. We went jet skiing on the sound side one morning, it was a lot of fun. But I think jet skiing on a lake is more fun.