Wilmington Trip - Days 8 & 9

We spent the last day of our trip to Wilmington with my dad.  When we arrived at his house, there were more presents for the boys!  Their favorite was probably this bow and arrow (the hiking sticks my dad made them were a close second).  One of the arrows has a suction cup on the end so they practiced shooting it at the refrigerator!

The day was overcast with rain here and there so we decided to take the ferry to Southport.  The boys were really excited about riding on a boat and Carter had a million questions about why our car was also going on the boat (he is very inquisitive lately - he asks how every single food he eats is made).

We had a little time to kill before loading so we walked around near the marsh.

Here comes our ferry with passengers from Southport.

Waiting in our car after loading for the horn to blow indicating we can get out of the car ...

We started off at the front of the boat but then Carter begged and begged to go up to the second level.  I'm really glad we did because a minute or two after we went up there, the water got much choppier and the front of the boat got sprayed several times when hitting larger waves!

I took this picture through the front salt-sprayed windshield as we approached Southport.  Our car was at the front of the boat and got soaked!

We drove through Southport and went to Oak Island to have lunch at the Flying Fish Cafe on the Oak Island Pier.

They had amazing food - the batter on the fried shrimp was delicious!

And eating on the beach is always nice.

Especially with two behaving kids :)

After lunch we took a walk on the pier.

A little blue sky, finally!

We had fun watching this yellow-footed bird who was pretty good at getting some fish from the fishermen.

In the distance, you can barely see the Oak Island Lighthouse that is a few miles away.  That is where we headed next.

It's free to climb up the steps but they don't allow children in it so we didn't go up.  This is definitely NOT one of the pretty NC lighthouses!

We decided to head back to my dad's house at this point but the ferry line was super long (we'd probably have to wait an hour or two).  So we drove through downtown Wilmington instead and the boys took a nice nap.

The boys love my dad's little dogs.  They don't necessarily love the boys (they aren't around kids ever) but tolerate them (they hide under the couch a lot).

The boys had a jam session and put on lots of performances for us.

That night Karey and Mike came over for dinner - a "silly face" group photo ...

The next day we drove back to Nashville.  It took us 12 hours to get to Wilmington but I was able to make it back in 11 hours.  The boys did amazing in the car again and I was able to listen to an audiobook a lot of the time to keep awake.  We had a good trip and home to do it again sometime!