The Beach

There are few things as refreshing as a beautiful saltwater beach. In this case, Wrightsville Beach near Wilmington, North Carolina. We went partly for the beach itself, which is hard to replicate in Illinois, and also because Rebecca has a few friends who reside in Wilmington. Camping, biking, swimming, and sailing are a few of activities we were able to cram into the last week while staying with a friend of Rebecca's from high school.

In order to get our camping fix, we went to Carolina Beach State Park for the first night. It is a nice campground with gravel tent pads that drain well when it rains. We were able to ride to the beach in about 15 minutes from the campsite. At the beach we acquired stage 1 of our beach tans. In my case there was a little bit of a burn.

It rained the next night so we moved indoors to Kyle's apartment in Wilmington. In a mutually beneficial situation that would continue for the rest of our stay, we cooked her dinner (oyster and crab stew) in exchange for a place to stay and a guided tour of the local scene.

Two days later, after acquiring stage 2 of our tans, we were off to Ellen's (another friend of Rebecca's) family's river house for a day of sailing and relaxing on the Pungo River in northeast North Carolina.

They had a sunfish sailboat, so we took that out a few times while we were there. We didn't go to far, venturing out into the main part of the Pungo River only once because the water was a little choppy. Since a sunfish is such a small boat you really have to work together to sail it with two people so you don't get in each others way.

Coming back to Wilmington we had only a few days to hit the local french bistro for dinner, attend a local rock show that was way too loud (but good), and acquire stage 3 of our tans.