OBX "school-cation" {Hatteras}

**saturday late morning/early afternoon, 10/17**

"School-cation." 

This time last year if you had asked me what I thought about "school-cations" I would have pulled my grandfather's signature "suck my teeth" noise at you and rolled my eyes, muttering something about "rule breakers" and "if you're gonna leave town at least just own it and call it skipping school."

Yet here we are seven months into "the great social distancing of 2020" and our family is on our second round of "school-cation." 

We packed play clothes, food to feed an army and all the laptops, chargers & ear buds and headed to NC's beautiful barrier islands.  

Something about making lemonade out of the lemons of this pandemic...

This "school-cation" offers the comfortingly familiar sound of the ocean, new activities to explore and walls that are different from those we've become numb to over the past 200+ days.  

By the time we got out of town and grabbed dinner on the road (thanks Rocky Mount CFA for getting our order for 9 100%) we arrived at our home away from home ~ Sandy Bottoms beach house in Kill Devil Hills ~ in a cool, dark drizzle around 8pm Friday night. 

Saturday though, we awoke to the amazingly beautiful blue sky our state is known for ~ even if it was a bit on the cool side and breezy enough to have us digging in bags for hoodies and extra layers.

We're beach people and all, but temps hovering right at 60 and a steady 20mph wind made us rethink tossing a frisbee near the waves. 

We opted for a scenic drive down Hwy 12 instead, destination Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

 My kids may not have been quite as enamored as me over the structure, but I was happy to stand again in the shadow of the tallest lighthouse in the United States.  In fourth grade I did a project on Cape Hatteras ~ not sure now if it was assigned or if I got to choose and selected it because of the "candy cane stripe" ~ and my dad helped me create a (to scale of course) working wooden replica of the lighthouse.  In fact it still is in the closet of my old room at Mom's house today...

Years would pass though before I ever got to see Hatteras in person.  We were beach people back then, but the calmer waters of Brunswick County beckoned and we spent our summer vacation enjoying quiet days at Sunset Beach instead of braving the rougher waters of "the Graveyard of the Atlantic."  

It wasn't until my high school years that our family make the much longer drive to the Outer Banks.  I finally got to see "my lighthouse" in person, even if only from the ground...by then the lighthouse was closed to climbing (1984-1993) because a chunk of metal window trim had fallen to the ground.  So I was last here late in the decade of the best music ever, with a rectangular Kodak camera (with a built in flash) in hand, snapping pictures and hoping they turned out.

Thankfully the lighthouse was repaired, later (the summer we were married) moved away from the encroaching ocean and still stands today, offering light to navigate the treacherous waters of Diamond Shoals.  

But I still didn't get to climb.

Because. 

2020. 

Stupid Covid.

Maybe in 30 more years...

At any rate, I mentioned they moved the lighthouse?  Turns out the candy-cane striped Hatteras Lighthouse is not only (records show likely) the tallest brick lighthouse in the world, but it is also one of the tallest masonry structures ever to be successfully moved. 

So of course we "had" to stop by the original location

...and since it was essentially on the breach...

It may have been cold, but "toes in sand" is a way of life.