Beach, beach, and more beach

Thanks to our long weekend and a decent weather forecast, we wound up with a full day to spend in Ocracoke, with none of the usual 'must watch the clock and the weather so we can fly home later the same day' nonsense. What a nice change of pace! We slept in a little bit, then decided to skip the hotel's breakfast and see what we could find in town.

Turns out we could find tasty bagels and really good coffee. And chocolate chips swiped from the sugar and creamer station. Mmm...chocolate and caffeine...

We spent a little time biking through town, managed to find a new beach umbrella, then stopped back at the room to change into our bathing suits. A short bike ride later, we were back at the cool little beach we'd found the day before: Springer's Point.

The water was really nice (and calm!), and it wasn't too crowded. We set up our stuff off to the side, Mark fought with the new umbrella in the wind for a few minutes (we kind of laughed when a family down the beach did the same exact thing a few minutes later), then spent most of the morning in the water. There were a few boats fishing further out, and at one point I saw a sting ray or skate jump partway out of the water. For the most part, we only saw little schools of bait fish where we were swimming, though there were a lot of neat birds (including pelicans).

These people pulled right up to the beach in their boat a little while after we got there. At first we were mildly interested - they did have two dogs with them, and how cool would it be to just boat yourself to a little beach? - but they quickly usurped most of the beach with their music, floats, and kite with a stupidly long tail that drifted closer and closer to my head. One of the dogs escaped and ran somewhere down the trail leading into the woods, one of the kids amused himself by doing cannonballs off their paddleboard, and their floating cooler drifted further and further from the boat. I have to admit, I laughed to myself when their kite nose-dived into the water as we were drying ourselves off.

Bye, Springer's Point! We eventually got hungry and packed up to head back into town for some lunch. We grabbed iced coffees from one of the tasty coffee places, then biked over to Eduardo's, a food truck, for some reeeeeally good tacos (and a scallop and bacon quesadilla - yum!). We eventually made our way back over to the airport, locked up our bikes, and walked back out to the bigger beach.

So. Hot. The sand was like lava, and it was so soft that there wasn't an easy way to walk through it without flinging great scoops of it from your flip flops with each step.

The beach was a bit busier than it had been the day before, but we found a spot, set up our towels and umbrella, and hopped back in the water.

The birds needed to keep their feet cool, too.   :)

We hung out in the water and at our towels for a little while, then took a walk down the beach to check out some of the kites people were flying.

This guy flew past while we were walking.

Turns out the kites were a lot further down than we expected. They were HUGE! The frog kite got tangled in the lines just as we got there...

...but a couple people ran back up from the water, and a few minutes later it was up and flying again.

We walked back to our towels and spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out in and out of the water before eventually packing up. We stopped at the plane to put the umbrella away for the trip home the next day, then biked back toward town.

We stopped at the Ocracoke Bar and Grill for Happy Hour (turns out bourbon and ginger ale is really good!), then biked back to the room to get cleaned up for dinner.

Turns out it's kind of tricky to ride a bike in a dress. They make it look so easy in the catalogs! I had seen this dress in a catalog and always liked it, then just happened to find one in my size at the surf shop where we bought our umbrella earlier in the day. Score!   :)

We went to Dajio for some fancy dinner, then biked over to Jolly Roger for a drink and dessert...

...and to steal their sunset view.   :)

We hung out for a little while, but once the live music started and we realized that the speaker was right behind us, we finished our drinks and got moving.

The sunset was really nice from our dock, too. We made some drinks at the room to empty our flasks before the trip home, hung out on our porch watching tree frogs hop around, and eventually went to bed. It was a really nice beach day!