Outer Banks - Day 2

Tuesday was another beautiful day at the Outer Banks!  After breakfast at the hotel, we headed south to Cape Hatteras National Seashore.  Last time we were in the Outer Banks, the entire area was still closed due to recovery from the summer's hurricanes.  This time everything was open except for Ocracoke Island which was scheduled to open the following week.

Our first stop was the Bodie Island Lighthouse.  We took some pictures, walked around, and picked up the Junior Ranger booklets for the kids to work on during the day.  Unfortunately the lighthouses in the park cannot be climbed during this season but they were still impressive to see.

The water was perfectly still and lovely.

We continued driving south to Hatteras area.  Our goal was to find a beach where the boys could find some nice shells.  My research led us to South Beach which is adjacent to Cape Point in Buxton (near Cape Hatteras Lighthouse).  The area did not disappoint!!!

It was just warm enough to walk with your feet in the water and we had the area pretty much to ourselves (we only saw a few people the entire time we were out there).

We found several horseshoe crabs shells.

We spent a couple of hours finding amazing shells before we worried Gray would refuse to walk back to the car and we'd have to deal with very hungry kiddos.  We found complete whelks and shark eyes and lots of other awesome shells.

Our next stop was lunch.  We headed over to Buxton Munch Co and got some seafood (and burgers for the boys).  Then we continued on to the end of the island and visited The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum.  The museum is free and had some decent exhibits.  There was also a scavenger hunt in the museum for the kids to complete and they got bracelets once done.

Scary pirates!!!

After the museum, we headed back up to the lighthouse.  On the way we stopped by a geocache as well.  Again, we couldn't go into the lighthouse but the kids turned in the junior ranger booklets and got another badge (that was three so far!).

On the drive back up the coast, we stopped for a few minutes to enjoy the beautiful sunset.

When we got back up to Kill Devil Hills, we went to a tiny little restaurant called Food Dudes Kitchen.  It was great!  Rylan tried fish for the first time and loved it (I had jerk mahi-mahi that was amazing).  When done, we headed back to the hotel and let the boys got swimming again before heading off to bed.