At this very moment, I should be curled up on the couch in the beach house watching tv and playing with Smudge. But alas, I am sitting on my bed in my room at home typing this post.
You see, these is a little thing on it's way up the coast at this very moment. Her name is Irene and she is a level 3 hurricane. She's headed straight for the Outer Banks, her second stop after hitting the Bahamas.
We knew all week long that she was threat to our beach vaca, but we had high hopes that she would change her course and head out into open water. {I mean, tens of hurricanes do that very thing every year, right?} We heard on Tuesday that we may be made to evacuate the island on Thursday but that was just hearsay. We had a fingers crossed that this would not happen. I mean, we've been waiting for this trip ALL SUMMER! And then Tuesday's earthquake hit back home around Richmond. My mom, grandma and I didn't feel it because we were on the beach. There was nothing to shake around us. But Hunter came down to the beach immediately to tell us and inform us that Tsunami's do happen. She we packed up our stuff and headed back to the house. {Granted our beach house was only a block off the beach so it's not like we would have been safe or anything.}
After Tuesday's little episode we figured that our natural disasters where done for the week, right? WRONG. Wednesday night arrives and we're hit with the news: All tourist must begin to evacuate the island starting Thursday morning at 8 am. That would be 250,000 tourist all required to leave at the SAME time off of an island that only had to bridge exits. And that was the last straw. We hit up the outlets for the hour we had left before their closing, and then we headed back to the house.
It was 9 Wednesday night when we began cleaning and packing. We left the house an hour later {we're fast like that}. There was NO WAY we were going to sit in traffic the following morning for hours on end. A lot of people in our neighborhood had the same idea, it seemed. We drove for three hours and ended up in Rocky Mount, NC. We stayed the night in a VERY questionable motel where Hunter and I shared a double bed. We made it home safely around 3 the next afternoon.
Needless to say, we are pretty bummed that we didn't get to finish out our vacation. It's the only vacation we get a year. I'm supposed to be on vacation until Sunday and that's how it's going to stay. I'm not going into work and I'm avoiding everything that has to do with Splash Valley.
Anyway, I would post more pictures, but I took most of them on film. I have a new found love for my film slr after this trip. Full frame really does make all the difference!
p.s. 8 days and counting!!!!!
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| awesome tan lines |
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| grandma |
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| please share? |
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| itchy sand |
