Outer Banks - Day 3

On the third day of our trip to the Outer Banks before Thanksgiving, we started the day off at Jockey's Ridge State Park.  We stopped at the Visitors Center and then headed to the dunes.  It was pretty windy so we flew the kite we brought for a few minutes but interest in that was over very quick.

We moved on to attempting to sled the dunes.  We had a tough time finding some that worked well with the sleds we brought from home.

We eventually found this monster.  It was steep but ended abruptly at the bottom (no gentle slope at the end to slow you down).

It was quite the hike back up to the top so the boys only rode this hill a few times.

I can't get the videos to post that I took but they are pretty good at showing how big this hill is.  Luckily no one recorded me because I had my feet too far over the edge of the sled and stopped very abruptly at the bottom, created a spectacular sand explosion, and hurt my back.

After all the "fun", we took a hike around the park along the Tracks in the Sand Trail and also helped the boys complete their junior ranger books (North Carolina's state parks have a program similar to the national parks - I so wish Tennessee also had something!).

You can see the rain starting to come in as we hiked around the dunes.  Luckily we finished our hike with only a few sprinkles.

After the hike we stopped by the visitor center to turn in the Junior Ranger books.  Each of the boys received a cool patch for completing their books.

Our next stop was lunch.  We headed back to Manteo and went to Poor Richard's Sandwich Shop.  It was crowded but we got a table and had a super yummy lunch.  And Rylan tried my Rockfish Wrap so he was super proud that he tried another type of fish.

Because of the rain we decided a visit to the NC Aquarium on Roanoke Island would be our best afternoon activity before heading back to Raleigh.

My favorite part of the aquarium was the sea turtle rehab area where we got to see several turtles with different injuries and talk to a caregiver to learn more about them.

After the aquarium, we grabbed a quick geocache and started the drive to Raleigh.  Unfortunately there was a long set of barges that caused the bridge off the island to be open for about 20 minutes.  On the bright side, we got to enjoy this gorgeous sunset.