Beach Adventure

We headed to Atlantic Beach this past week and there was a huge suprise for us there. So many balls of kelp were being washed up in the surf it looked something like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/af/STTroubleTrib.jpg

So...what do you do when the beach is covered in kelp? You make kelp castles, of course! We made spectacular sand structures reinforced with kelp, with bridges and archways using a washed up flip flop, the handle from someone's sand bucket, sticks, the wooden ends of bottle rockets and anything else we could find. My son said to me he didn't think it would be that much fun when he saw all this kelp on the beach, but it turned out to be the best thing ever. lol, kids.

We went deep sea fishing and as we boarded I watched a girl eating an egg mcmuffin. Two drunk guys finagled their way onto the boat and one spent about 20 minutes explaining to me in slurred speach that they weren't really drunk. Then he fell on me. I told the crew I was not happy, that I didn't want my kids endangered by fishing near these drunk guys and that they shouldn't have been allowed on board.

Troy caught a shark!! That thing was tough to real in and I'm so proud of him. My husband held onto troy while he reeled in the line. It was about 2 1/2, maybe 3 feet long. It was the biggest catch of the day for the boat. We caught tons of fish, but most were too small and had to be thrown back. We did wind up with enough fish for dinner.

This was the roughest ride out to sea I've ever experienced. Everyone was barfing. ...that girl from lost her egg mcmuffin. My husband grabbed a barf bag for himself, but saw she was about to hurl so he held out the barf bag and it didn't open properly so she barfed all over his hands and arms.

The drunk guys were caught drinking more whiskey on the top deck and it was taken away by the crew. Then they fell on people about 3 or 4 more times. The last time one of them fell on 3 kids while they were fishing. These guys were not allowed on the lower deck anymore and the captain almost handcuffed them. It was bad.

Troy barfed out his breakfast all over the top deck. I wasn't there to see this, but I've heard the tales from my husband.

We laughed our butts off after we got off that boat. Every single one of us laughed and joked for hours. It was like every possible adventure you could have happened on that boat that day. We all felt like the ground was moving for the rest of the afternoon.

We took a ferry out to Shackleford Island to see the wild horses. They think these horses decended from those that made it ashore from spanish ships that wrecked. It was really cool to see the horses and hear how the island is observed and managed without disturbing them. The hike was pretty grueling in flip flops and sand and it was hot hot hot.

The most fun I had was boogie boarding. I love to ride those waves in. I took such a beating from the waves that my bathing suit was filled with sand...it had gotten beaten into the fabric of my suit and was trapped inside of the liner so I had to take scissors and cut a hole in the liner and pour out the sand....a lotta sand.

I could play in the waves all day, every day, I think.

 

Throne, I can't imagine any remnants of my breakfast surviving a boat in hurricane weather.

Mani, I wish you guys were there. It would be a blast to do this kind of trip with you all.

 

Reign, troy said it was really hard for him to reel that shark in, but I had no idea how hard he must have worked till I hooked a grouper. My grouper was only 19 inches and had to be thrown back due to size, but my arm was bruised up afterward. My husband held onto me while I brought in that grouper, too!


And faith, it would definitely be fun.

 

Shads, I didn't know sharks like to bite so much out of the water! The crew showed troy how to hold the shark on its gills.

 

It would have been even more fun if you were there!!