September 21st: Lazy Beach Day

I didn't sleep the best the first night in the house, thanks to some noisy doggies and trash pickup at 3am, but oh well...I wasn't about to let any of that mess with my vacation! I eventually got up, had some breakfast, then...

...finished my coffee out on the deck. Really, I wouldn't mind starting every day like that.

After breakfast, we took the dogs down to the beach for a walk.

There were a few of these birds running around right at the edge of the water.

The doggies seemed pretty happy to be back in the water.   :)

This pier was right near our little path onto the beach. The building on top was all boarded up, and parts of the pier had broken apart and fallen into the water.

The pelicans didn't seem to mind, though.

We hung out on the beach for a little while, then eventually wandered back to the house for some snacks. These flowers filled the front yard of the house; it was neat to see all of the butterflies floating around.

After lunch, we went back out to the beach again. I hung out under the umbrella and read a few flying magazines I brought from home.

I also watched a few little crabs digging out their holes. It was fun to watch them poke their heads out, then fling little piles of sand.

Mark decided to try out his fishing pole for a bit. It seemed a little tricky with the waves, but he tried a few different lures to see if he had any better luck.

I kept watching the little crab right in front of the towel.

Mark took a break from fishing after a little while and went back to the house to get the dogs. Wembles seemed to pick up in the whole beach bum thing pretty fast.

We took them for another walk after hanging out on the towels for a few minutes.

I especially like this picture of Bacon.   :)

Mark took each one of the dogs swimming, which was really funny; I wish I had taken pictures or video of it. He walked a few feet out into the water, held onto them while they figured out what was going on, then let go of them so they could swim back to shore. We had fun with that for a few minutes, then realized that a bunch of sandy wet doggies in a rental house maybe wasn't the greatest thing, so we took them back to the house and Mark gave them all a bath. Oh well...it was worth it to laugh at them swimming.   :)

After they were all clean, we hung out on the deck for a while.

We did take a break from all the hanging out to wander down to the beach near sunset.

Zach came, too. We were super classy and took our drinks with us.

We walked down to the pier, then walked out through the parking lot to the road. You can just see a little bit of the Pamlico Sound, though the view wasn't quite as open as I hoped.

There were a bunch of super serious photographers when we got back to the beach; they had big tripods and were all wearing khakis and polo shirts and seemed super serious. I thought they were a pretty funny contrast to me, walking around barefoot with a drink in my hand and carrying a giant camera on my shoulder.

We wandered back to the house and had some leftover pizza for dinner. The dogs were all still passed out; apparently all we have to do is take them on a bunch of walks and make them swim to finally wear them out!

We also taught Zach to play Yahtzee, and played a few rounds with some drinks and snacks.

That last one might have been my highest score ever!   :)