After spending much of the first day of our mini trip in Santa Cruz, we headed down to Pajaro Dunes, where we would be staying at a beach house for the next couple days. It was a beautiful and spacious beach house right by the shore, and we had a great time relaxing there, enjoying the view, and easily taking walks on the beach as it was only footsteps away.
Taking a morning walk on the beach the next morning…
Saturday was our last full day at Outer Banks, so we drove around Cape Hatteras to explore the little attractions in the area. It was a nice way to end our weeklong stay in Hatteras.
After lunch, we explored some gift stores in the area, and then Dan and Mio hit the beach again one last time while Mirei and I rested at the beach house. In the evening, we drove out to see our last sunset at Outer Banks.
On Friday during our week at Cape Hatteras, we went to visit the famous Hatteras Lighthouse, which is the tallest brick lighthouse in the country. Since we had a baby with us, we didn’t climb the lighthouse, but it was still an impressive structure to see.
Afterwards, we visited the old original site of the lighthouse (it was relocated to its current location some years ago), and found a little river-like area where lots of turtles were swimming.
We headed back to the house and of course squeezed in more beach time before the predicted thunderstorm came in.
Our vacation at Outer Banks got a whole lot more eventful once the other half of our family arrived late Wednesday night! The girls and I really missed Dan, and we were excited to really kick our vacation in gear once he, Ted, and Elisa arrived. My siblings and Dan really wanted to go bicycling around the area on Thursday, but I opted not to join because the bicycle rental shop didn’t have any adult tricycles available at the time. (That’s right, at age 31 I never mastered how to ride a bicycle due to my balance issues… so sad!) There was the option of going on a tandem bicycle with Dan, but I decided to stay behind and watch Mirei with my parents while Mio rode with Dan and the rest of the gang. She had so much fun with it, and I’m glad that they captured lots of photos and video for me to see afterwards.
A video Dan took while bicycling:
After lunch and relaxing a little bit back at the house, we went to hit the beach together!
More on our last few days at Outer Banks in the coming days! 🙂