Traveling Toward Retirement

Oh boy did I get up early today. Luckily I slept better but 5am came and my body was done resting. A hot shower in silence and some coffee brewed then allowed me to take in the slow sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean. These shots were taken just thirty minutes apart and you can see how much light floods into the space. A lot can change in thirty minutes; a good lesson in life and how things never stay the same. Another busy morning with breakfast for the crew in our oceanfront condo. This place is amazing and I’d gladly come back in the summer…although I’m willing to bet that the crowds here in the summer might make it a less enjoyable stay.  We hit the road, Katie with her anti-nausea wristbands , unfortunately for her, she is prone to motion sickness like me and my grandma. These wristbands seem to help! We stopped at Bodie Lighthouse before leaving the island and snapped a few photos in the chilly wind. Our next stop was Tina and Tim’s house in Grifton, NC. They have just over ten ...

I slept poorly and woke early at 7am. And lo and behold, I see the sun just peeking over the ocean from the front of our condo. Sunrise was 7:13am and here it is… My morning thoughts of travel were reflecting on how many new homes we saw on the drive from Virginia Beach to here in Kitty Hawk. It seemed like each one was 3,000sq ft or larger and all in the farmhouse style. Who is buying these mansions I wondered? Who is paying 600-800k because I checked Zillow and they aren’t cheap. New Yorkers apparently. And I don’t blame them one bit. My mom’s entire family left New York in the early 70’s and came to sunny California. I don’t think that anybody owns the land in any state. We are all just visitors on a journey. To each their own.  First stop of the day was the aquarium and with our crew of 12. We had 10:30am reservations so after a breakfast of toaster waffles, sausage, and cantaloupe, we headed over ready to check out the fish! It was a pretty cool aquarium and thankfully it was...

Today we cleaned up and moved out of Virginia Beach. We packed up the Chrysler Pacifica rental van and headed thirty minutes south to Munden Point Park where they have 18 holes of disc golf waiting for us. This park had great reviews and we were blessed with a sunny day (our first on this trip). We had an interesting Amish crew in front of us playing through which was a sight you don’t see every day. And we met a few other players who agreed that this was a good course for us to check out on our travels. Todd got to use his Sidewinder which he got for his birthday   I’ll attach the scorecard below so you can check out how the crew did. With my bum shoulder, I just watch and occasionally video for the youngest who have Instagram pages dedicated to their love of the sport. Recently Emily has even gotten a sponsorship from one company so she’s trying to produce more action packed vids for the gram 😜  And after all of that exercise, our crew was in search of a late lunch (seems...

After watching the Spaceforce tv show last night, Todd found an air and space museum up in Norfolk for us to check out. Before heading out a hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, and cinnamon raisin toast was devoured by our hungry crew.  A short drive to Hampton led us to the nearly empty Air and Space Museum. We were able to see one of the Apollos that made it to the moon and returned. There was a large exhibit dedicated to the women that the movie Hidden Figures was based on. All of them lived in Hampton and did their mathematical research at Langsley Research Center.  There were lots of cool planes and information about their development and improvements over the years. We ended our tour with a 40 minute IMAX film about caves and essentially we all learned that water caves are not for us but super cool to watch other people risk their lives for science. Essentially they were trying to study the water that is in these caves because it was from the ice age. Pretty interesting, bu...

Well we slept last night y’all. Boy did we sleep! I woke up at 9:07am which is unbelievable. I will say that I was the first one up and we were all exhausted from the long day of travels yesterday.  After some showers, coffee with no sugar, (we will need to solve that issue later), and cereal, we checked the weather and although it said rain…we made the executive decision to try our luck with the weather and head out to a disc golf course.  We were all excited to get out in nature and walk around. One of the beautiful things about disc golf is that it’s essentially hiking in the woods so you’re bathing in nature if you’ve ever heard of that concept.  Disc golf is like ball golf with 18 holes. Jacob shot even par, Todd shot 9 up, Emily was 10 over, and Katie plays for fun 😉 but did par two holes! It only drizzled a bit and we all brought rain coats so all was well. After our round of golf we drove to a lunch spot called Noodleman that has been voted best restaurant so we...

We landed in Raleigh, NC around 8:15am today. I barely slept on the plane but a few small power naps gave me enough energy to get the rental van and map directions to a Panera for breakfast. I must say, I prefer my Starbucks coffee, but their breakfast sandwiches are quite tasty.  After sitting down and feasting for a bit, we set out with our gps set on Virginia Beach, Virginia. So yes, we’ve been in three states just today! I drove and listened to my new book for a while before I made the wise decision to let Todd drive and take a much needed nap. I was able to crash for a bit while he drove us into Virginia Beach. Luckily our AirBnb allowed us to check in early and we gladly did! After dropping our bags and getting a lay of the place, we opened our phones and looked for a pizza joint. Virginia Beach is clearly in the dead season right now. We’ve been to Florida during the warmer months and it’s crowded and busy. This is not that. But it’s also nice to be able to find parking and ...