Who doesn’t love the beach? Our family is no exception. Every year the extended bunch hits the Outer Banks in North Carolina, renting several houses and meeting up to enjoy the sun, water, and one another’s company in a beautiful setting. The vacation is planned a year in advance, and my sons, Corey & Mason, look forward to this time to play in the sand with their cousins,Sydney & Evan, and extended cousins – and yell at me in protest that they don’t really need any sunscreen – all year long. (Above is a shot of our alternative vacation – Deep Creek Lake, in the mountains of MD.)

So you can imagine the devastation we all felt when a bridge construction accident led to the severing of the power to Ocracoke Island as well as Hatteras Island (where our rented house sat, unoccupied, beckoning to us) a mere two days before our vacation was set to begin. Lights out, my friends!

A flurry of activity began the moment the lights went out. A mandatory evacuation of Ocracoke Island was announced, and ferries ran non-stop to take the tourists off the tiny remote island. Only residents and employees were allowed to remain. I thought, okay, well, there goes our annual trek to Howard’s Pub, our favorite restaurant/bar on Ocracoke, with its huge welcoming screened-in deck and wonderful food and draft beer selections. But! Perhaps the rest of Hatteras Island would not suffer the same fate, and we would be able to go, even if there was limited power supplied by generators and we had to forego A/C and rely on charcoal grills to cook our food. Glamping sounded pretty good to me, considering that the weather was supposed to top out at a high of 81 degrees, the house we rented was gorgeous, AND the beach access was the same, with our without power.

With this hope in mind, and considering that the car was already packed for our vacation, we set off for Kill Devil Hills, which is not as remote as Hatteras Island, even though it is still part of the Outer Banks. We had pre-paid for a room at the Quality Inn (it’s a dump – don’t go there – and that’s all I’m going to say on that subject), and we were still hopeful that the power might be restored before our vacation was set to begin. We left at 4:30 AM and reached the Outer Banks by 10:30 AM, giving us almost the whole day to enjoy.

And we did. We visited the Wright Brother’s Museum – a place we’d always wanted to see, but in the past had just driven by as we powered our way all the way out to Hatteras Island. It was really fun. We listened to an informative speech by a park ranger and then meandered around the site, seeing the marked take-off and landing spots the Wright Brothers used, and taking in the spectacular views after we hiked all the way up to the memorial. This is a shot of us up at the memorial. As usual, I’m not looking at the camera.

Afterword we did lunch at Awful Arthur’s Oyster Bar. The sky lounge, where we had appetizers and drafts as we looked over the ocean, was my favorite part, but it was a nice little lunch spot. Then it was on to the beach! The best part of our hotel was that it’s beach front, and we got ready and hit the beach for a few hours, making the kids wildly happy and allowing us some time to relax.

After cleaning up, we hit Goombay’s for dinner, and the seafood was wonderful. I had red snapper in a creamy but still light sauce and some delicious chardonnay, and it was a hit with the kids too. Plus we could walk there from the hotel – nice on the way out, but not so much on the way back, because a storm was threatening to blow my hair into a fashion that would only have been acceptable in the ’80s. We opted for Uber instead.

During our stay in Kill Devil Hills, we learned that our trip to the Hatteras Island house was officially canceled (boo!), but my wonderful mother-in-law (who we had rented the house with, along with my BIL and his wife) had spent the better part of the day booking us a back-up vacation in Deep Creek Lake, MD. The only minor issue with this plan for us is that Deep Creek is 400 miles from Kill Devil Hills, but we thought – who cares? We’d never been there before. And if the boys had been denied their week with the cousins, we might have found ourselves in a tenser situation than the current nuclear stand-off between the US and North Korea. Would you want to go there? Me neither.

We scarfed some breakfast and then meandered back to the beach to dip our toes in the sand….

……for about 20 minutes before throwing our suitcase back in the car and hitting the road, Jack. I was personally really excited for part deux of our vacation adventure, and while it was a boatload of driving, I’m not sorry we did either part.

We drove in via the West Virginia route in order to avoid 95 traffic horrors, and that was the right choice. We saw all sorts of beautiful scenery along the way, and lost our beach chairs off the roof on a back road rather than a highway (oops), which possibly saved somebody’s life. The strap holding them up there snapped after hundreds of miles of my driving. Rossen Reports has already phoned me about filming a reenactment of the incident.

But we made it safely, after about 8 hours of travel, in time for dinner with the rest of the family. The house was gorgeous, high up on the mountain, and offered a spectacular view of the lake below (the first picture in this post is the view from our house). Here are the kids, looking down at us from their loft:

The next day we pretty much hit the ground running, and we took advantage of the many activities that Deep Creek offers at the resort. Here are the 10 of us before our adventures began:

First, we hit the mountain coaster, which is a no joke thrill-ride down the mountain that had me swearing and vowing to never do it again, while Mason (who drew the short straw and got stuck with me as a partner) yelled “Mom! Don’t hit the breaks! Here comes another turn! WOOOOHOOOO!” He was terrified to do it beforehand, and then he was a total maniac and wanted to hit it 10 more times after he did it. Typical Mason. Corey also loved it, and, since he’s 12, he was old enough to drive one of the coaster cars himself. Nobody died during this event, so I guess it was a success.

This is Amanda & Sydney (with Shawn) on the coaster before going up on the mountain coaster:

And then a shot as they were heading up the mountain (scenic chair lift on the right):

But that was by no means the scariest event of the day. Not. Even. Close.

After the mountain coaster, eight of us, including the four kids and their parents, hit the Spider Monkey obstacle course. Here we all are, thinking “This is gonna rock!” Idiots.

This course ends with a 200-foot zip line, and that was a lot of fun, but the rest of it turned me into a terrified shaking weenie. The course is maybe 20 feet up in the air, but it felt like about 200 feet when I was up there, and I’m not even afraid of heights. It starts with a 40-foot spider web that you have to pull yourself through, stepping on wildly moving ropes and grabbing onto ropes with your hands, and the ground looks mighty far down as you swing all over the place and pray your arms don’t give out before you make it to the other side. Here is Evan, showing us how it’s done:

Then you make it to the other side platform. Where another obstacle awaits you. A rope bridge that swings all over the place. Sydney demonstrates her agility here:

Then it’s a skate board attached to some ropes, just floating through the air. I don’t want to skateboard on the ground. I don’t know why I thought it would be fun to skateboard through the air. The hardest obstacle for me was the next one – a bunch of long boards, spaced at angles, dangling from ropes, so that your balance was all over the place and the next foothold/rope to grab was always just out of your reach, forcing you to jump/grab for it to advance.

It ain’t over yet.

Before the zip line course conclusion, a balance beam awaits you. With a huge gap in the middle and nothing to hold onto. At this point I thought, well, that’s all she wrote. The fire department is going to have to come and rescue me with a ladder. Or maybe they can just knock me off with the hose. But either way, I was pretty sure it was over.

Until it wasn’t, and I pretty much just ran across and then hugged the pole on the platform at the other side. I thought about kissing it, opted to retain the tiniest shred of dignity,  and instead jumped off and did the zip line to the end, where I also considered throwing up. I did not throw up. Amanda felt the same way, but she too managed to do it. Girl power!

Where were the kids during all this, you ask? All four of them just beasted out and did the course before any of the adults even started. They were out of their harnesses and cheering (or jeering) us on from the ground. Stinkers. Fearless stinkers. But still – stinkers. Here’s Corey doing the zip line like a boss:

From there we recuperated with the 30-minute scenic chairlift up the mountain, and it was spectacular. Deep Creek is not only home to summer lake fun, but also winter activities with the Wisp Ski Resort.

We hit Honi Honi for a fun happy hour and views of the lake, including a mama with her baby ducks in tow, afterward. I’d go there again in hot second, despite the fact that the server got all our drink orders wrong. That speaks to the ambiance, for sure. The crab dip and fresh guacamole were delicious, too. The kids found this massive chair at Honi Honi:

The next day featured mini golf and Funland for the kids, plus a trip to the lakeside beach. There is sand there, and roped off swimming, but there are also rocks galore. The kids really liked it, but we needed swim shoes and giant floaties to really enjoy it. Next time.

The next day the event was a relaxing and informative pontoon boat tour. The listed time was an hour, but our tour guide was clearly on island time, because we cruised calmly around the lake for closer to 90 minutes. This was a highlight for me. It was just so beautiful and serene out there, plus it was fun to look at the houses on the lake as well as the other people enjoying water sports from speed boating to wave runners to water skiing to tubing off the back of other boats. Here are some shots from the pontoon boat:

We decided to do a morning hike the next day, and we hit Swallow Falls State Park for a gorgeous trek through the woods. The kids loved it. The adults loved it. The temperature was great in the shade of the forest, and we did the whole loops, taking some side paths and wandering onto the rocks right next to the various waterfalls in the park. There were moments when I thought I might slip on a rock and find myself swept away by the rapidly churning water, but luckily this didn’t happen. Swallow Falls pictures:

After our hike, we rewarded ourselves with a visit to the Lakeside Creamery, where they make all their own ice cream, and it is delicious. We made our selections and then sat at a picnic table and enjoyed the lake views while we ate. Mason and his ice cream cone (birthday cake and cotton candy in a waffle cone):

Damian, Corey and I decided to hit the lake the following morning for a wave runner adventure. It was SPECTACULAR! The best wave runner experience of my life. We had total freedom on the lake, and since it’s 65 miles around, we had a TON of ground to cover. And cover it we did. At break-neck speeds that made me think I might go flying off the back while my husband tried to reenact the motorcycle scene with Tom Cruise in “Top Gun.” I didn’t really object, though, until we started doing donuts. At which point he said, “We have to show our son a good time.”

Uh huh.

The rest of the family was set to kayak that afternoon, but there weren’t enough kayaks. This was sad for the adults, but good for the kids, because we ended up at Inflatable Water Park, which none of us had ever done before, and they just LOVED. They climbed up these huge inflatables – think bounce houses made for the water – jumped or slid off the tops, swam/ran around water obstacles, and just generally got crazy for the duration of their time. During which the adults enjoyed margaritas and a lovely view from the picnic table. Until a lightning bolt caused immediate evacuation, but there was only about a minute left on their time at that point, so who cared? The inflatable water park shots:

We also found a fun little bar/restaurant right at the water park called Ace’s Run with a spectacular balcony overlooking the lake:

Damian took the boys back to Wisp the next day to re-do the mountain coaster and also to do the next-level zip lining course, the hour-long canopy tour, and hit Ace’s Run for a late lunch afterward with his brother, Amanda, and the cousins. After the Spider Monkey, there was no way I was going to try the canopy tour, and it sounded intense from what the boys said. High atop the trees, with rope bridges, huge zips, and two crazy 20-year-old guides who tried to shake them off the challenges. No thanks. I like my book.

In between all these wild activities, we ate some excellent meals, drank some really good wines, and played a lot of corn hole and cards. Overall, it was an excellent adventure. Damian and I are considering buying a lake house and retiring up there. If we do, you should come and visit us. Here we are on our last night, looking stupid-happy considering we were about to roll out. I guess we had a good time!