OBX21 Stuff

 This bunch of pictures from our OBX vacation is a little random. Sometimes when I'm sorting pictures they kind of group together nicely, and sometimes you wind up with stuff like this.

Awkward? This vacation was at the end of August, and I still have pictures to post. I've taken this picture before. It's at the Border Station rest stop and this line is supposed to be where Virginia and North Caroline meet. Does it really matter which state you are in, since it's ALL "America!"?

Nothing like seeing New York sports team merchandise in a Virginia/North Carolina gift shop. I could understand if this was at a regular sports store, or any normal store. But at a souvenir gift shop, it should only be local teams, right?

Not only did they have the sports teams mixed up, but holidays, too. I know it's taken me a long time to post these pictures, keep in mind this Xmas stuff was up on the shelves in August.

Despite the later check-in times, and our late departure, we were still very far ahead of our friends on the way to the Outer Banks. We knew the Digger's Graveyard was off the road, so we stopped to spend some time.

Is this the original Grave Digger? Looks pretty old and not as Monster-y as Monster Trucks are these days.

I don't know those people, but I thought I should just get a picture to show that everybody gets pictures climbing on the Grave Digger monster truck. Maybe you can tell how big the wheels are by the size of the tourists.

I don't know what a petting zoo has to do with monster trucks, but sure. There's some goats and what-not here to check out.

There was a chance to get a Minty picture on the big Grave Digger, so we ran up and got it. I'm on the front wheel there if you can't see how small I am standing on this thing.

The gift shop was already closed when we got there, but only by 5 minutes. D'oh! Did my friend really want a Grave Digger t-shirt? Eh, probably a bunch a skulls and stuff, so probably not. But it might have been nice to check 'em out.

Still early for the check in, so let's wander around the Walmart. This big blue chair picture was sent to our friends to illustrate our arrival in the OBX, since the Walmart is right near the OBX entrance bridge.

Yawn. Wandering around. Here's a Spider-Man Monopoly set with the coolest player tokens. They look like tiny statues!

You might have know people from the south who talk about this stuff called Cheerwine, and how great it is. It's got the words "Cheer" and "Wine" in it, how can that not be good?

There's usually a couple of cool beverage displays, this one has a giant origami surfer guy. Nice visual illusion where the boxes look like they curve over into the wave.

We wandered around the dollar store near the Walmart. Dollar movies yo! All this hard work to animate a bunch of squirrels, and it's only a buck? I wonder if Turbo makes a cameo.

Skip ahead to somewhere later in the week. This particular rain cloud looked just like a classic Valentine's Day heart, but was distorted by the time we had a good angle to get a picture out of the car window. Normally I would have just not-posted this fail picture, but I think there's a lesson here about nature pictures and how fleeting they can be.

I guess this is as good a place as any to post a few pictures from the Escape Room we went to. The theme we picked was a haunted room left alone since the 1980's. We had to help the ghost figure out who murdered her. We had not been to an actual escape room, but we practiced a couple of times this week with some home-box-versions.

They did not let us bring our phones into the room, for spoiler reasons, and I'm not even sure I can, or should, explain details about our attempt. All I can say is that it was a ton of fun! We did not "win" but we were super close. They give you one hour, and we seriously were like five minutes away from unlocking the old computer that would have quizzed us on the murder details, which we knew. There were lots of cool 80's references. Even thought we failed, I'm hyped to try other escape rooms, for sure.

One of the thrift stores we went to was next to this place, so I had to run over and get a picture. It's a restaurant called Biscuits n' Porn. Obviously the title is meant to be shocking and strike up your curiosity. Nobody was brave enough to actually peek inside to find out if it's accurate as advertised.

This is the outgoing Saturday traffic. We've never been to the time share for the entire week before, so we've never witnessed this, but we've been told it's a nightmare to leave on Saturday when "everyone" leaves at the same time in the morning. It was crazy! My pro friends were smart enough to drive the other way, and we planned to play minigolf until the traffic would be gone.

I circled it and put up an arrow, so you can see the bee that we watched for a minute or two when we parked at the minigolf place. It was carefully climbing into and out of the flowers. Go make some honey, bee!

Looks like I won't be driving the go-kart or bumper car. The entrance to the minigolf place has a small arcade. And wonderful air conditioning. It was bright and sunny that day. The air conditioning was extra nice.

What's with the Xmas stuff in August? I have to imagine that the whole Outer Banks is pretty much empty around Xmas, outside of the Summer tourist season. Hey, I got you this Xmas gift in the summer while on vacation! No... seriously, I did!

Nice display of colors to choose from. They didn't have a minty green so we just went with regular green. Wouldn't it be funny if everybody picked the same color? How much more confusing would that be?

Blackbeard has been hit with too much salt water in the air, and could use a re-painting. It actually looks like he's getting grey hair so maybe it's a lucky-accident aging effect. We payed for both 18-hole courses, and decided to play this one first.

Another face-hole photo op spot. This one works a little better for Minty since it still looks like I'm being eaten by this tooth-less menace.

Minigolf! It's been a while since we've played minigolf and this brings back happy memories. It was nice to do this on the last day instead of just going home right away. Even though we wanted to go minigolfing earlier in the week, but never quite found the time to do it.

The downside, and a really big downside, was the overwhelming hotness of the day. It was HOT!! Very little big things throwing precious shadows of shelter. We would hit the ball, and then run for cover wherever we could.

So... hot. The sun was merciless that day. There was one hole with a small cave, and we all took a few extra minutes inside there. Fortunately it was not very busy so we weren't holding anybody up.

The course was not easy, either. Nobody ever got a hole-in-one and several times we just messed up over and over. But everyone was too hot to care. Sure we were playing minigolf... but was it really worth it?

At one point, my friend just dropped his club and bolted straight over to the vending machines, at the sudden realization that we all might need to hydrate.  A quick moment to get request orders from everybody else, a delirious panic when the "plain water" was out of stock in the machine, and the workers inside had to be inquired upon, and we all stopped for a while to un-exhaust ourselves. While resting in the small shade of this structure, we spot a wasp nest. Thank goodness it was empty, but too thirsty to really get excited about it.

The hydration didn't help much, and we quickly finished up our 18 holes as fast as we could, so that we could stop being outside. Another round of beverages inside the air conditioning, it still took a while for everybody to recover from the hotness. There was no way we could play the other course in this heat.

We did pay for both courses, and it did say no refunds, but they were very happy to offer us a return trip at any time, next year... whatever. They were very "chill" about the whole thing, pun intended. I can't say we didn't have fun, but lesson learned for sure, about being outside in the blazing sun on a 100-degree day.

On the trip back home, noticed this chair outside the Border Station. Looks like it runs across that State Line so you can sit in Virginia and North Carolina at the same time! Should I try to get away with a "Your butt is soooo big... " joke?