Back to Life, Back to Reality

Well, my week of vacation has come to and end, and today I was back at work at the museum. I'm hoping to have lots of pictures to post soon from my time at the beach, but in the meantime here's a run-down on Vacation '08:

The rental house: have you ever seen that mid-80's movie starring John Candy called Summer Rental? Well, if you have, you pretty much know what our vacation house was like. And I'm not talking about the palatial paradise house that John Candy and family mistakenly arrive at in the beginning of the film! This house was ROUGHING IT. There was no AC, TV, phone, dishwasher, etc. The beds were all basically camp cots, and there was an ant issue in the kitchen. However, there was running water.

The surf and sand: FABULOUS!! The house might have been, um, lacking, but its major perk was that it is literally right on the beach. You open the front door and there's the ocean. So, even though it was a sweltering hot week with no AC, we could run down to the water and take a dip anytime we wanted to. My nephew and I spent a lot of time building very elaborate sand castles - a passion we both share. So, the beach part was terrific. Really, really nice perk!

The sites and sounds: Atlantic Beach is definitely not a touristy kind of town. Other than the beach, there isn't much to go and see, which was fine with us. We did check out the afore-mentioned aquarium, which I must say was really, really nicely done. We also visited Fort Macon state park, where they've restored the 19th century military fort. Although all of the exhibits at this fort referred to the Civil War as the "War Between the States", I didn't see much else to suggest a strong Confederate bias, and again I was really impressed with how well it was done. Lastly, we stopped in the cute little town of Beaufort and visited the maritime museum there. Very small, but crammed full of cool stuff, including artifacts from Blackbeard's ship "The Queen Anne's Revenge", which wrecked off the coast of Beaufort in the 1700's (I think). One afternoon we just couldn't take the heat anymore and went to see the movie Wall-e at the theater. I cried.

The level of relaxation: Pretty good. I mean, any time you spend lots and lots of quality time with your entire family you'll start to get a little tense, but otherwise I'm feeling pretty rejuvenated!

Thus endeth Vacation '08. I don't know if we'll be returning to Atlantic Beach next year or not, but it served us well.

Now, back to shaking the sand out of everything I own...