2009 Vacation: Day 6

Jen went to the grocery store, so things were slow around the house this morning. Ava decided to try his hand at drawing cartoon animals (they have a book for it):



The seas were rough, which is while it was more surprising that we saw a fishing boat so close to the shore. We'd been looking at some of the ones on the horizon through the telescope, but this one was so close to the house, we got this shot of it with our camera:



This afternoon we went letterboxing. For those that don't know, a full description of it can be found here. The short story is that people hide letterboxes in different places and leave instructions for finding them on the internet. As letterboxers, we have a journal and a stamp with our family insignia on it (our name is 100 Toes- so we have a stamp with two feet on it). When you find a letterbox, it also has a stamp and journal in it-- so you two things: (1) stamp the letterboxes journal with your stamp and give the date and city that you're from; and (2) stamp your journal with the letterboxes stamp and put the date and location of the letterbox. And that's it! If you know anything about geocaching-- it's the old school version of that.

Here we are searching for our first letterbox. Did I mention it was only 36 degrees with a strong wind? It was cold.



Hey! We found it!



Here I am leaving our stamp in the letterbox's journal-- my in-laws just gave us this new "feet" stamp for christmas and it's awesome.



The second one was hidden behind the stairs of this beach access point:



And here I am, once again, leaving our information in the journal. I'm laughing because while I'm doing this because Max is wailing at the top of his lungs to get out of his car seat, and Marney is crying because she didn't find the letterbox. It was a crazy cacophony of cries in the van.



Here's the stamps for the two letterboxes we found- the Run Run and the Legend of Nags Head:



We went searching for three more on different hiking trails, but couldn't find any of the letterboxes. After the third one wasn't where it was supposed to be, we figured out that the instructions were several years out of date. So, for instance, on one of them, the letterbox was hidden at the intersection of the two dead trees leaning together. Well we found the trees, but they weren't leaning together- they'd collapsed to the ground-- and there was no letterbox to be found. But it was cool even if we didn't find the letterboxes because we got to hike on some cool trails.



You can't see it as well in the above picture as you can in this next one, but these trails were all on sand dunes. So there's all these giant pine trees and the floor of the forest is completely covered in pine needles, but if you brush the needles aside, you're looking at sand. It was the most interesting terrain we've ever hiked on. Very spongy and slippery.



Gabe, who's obsessed with mushrooms, found this one on the first hike we took. It's stem had the consistency and appearance of a kitchen sponge. He was disappointed that we didn't bring his mushroom identification book with us on the trip (yes- he has one).



We also found this cool stagnant pond in the middle of the forest. The kids loved throwing pine cones into it because the algae was so thick that it didn't splash right. It was like throwing stuff into snot.



The coolest part of the hike was this cemetery we found on our second hike! It was an old family graveyard for the Tillet family (it was spelled differently for different members of the family):



The most recent person to be buried in the graveyard was Harriett Tillette, who died in 1955. But the oldest one was Capt. Thomas Tillett. I decided that we needed to show the proper reverence that the good captain would want from people visiting his grave.



Of course, he died in 1827, so he probably thinks that the camera is a magical device that traps peoples souls. But how cool is it that we're visiting his grave 181 years after he died? Jen went on the internet and found out that he was a ship's captain and died at sea. Awesome. Captain Thomas Tillett, we salute you!



And on the way back from the second hike, we found something almost as freaky as the 181 year old grave-- THE ULTIMATE CHRISTMAS HOUSE! No kidding. These people have the biggest most elaborate Christmas decorations we've ever seen. In the following picture you can see they have "Peace on Earth" on their roof- on the roof of their lower level, they had "Merry Christmas Lives!" in the same sized letters. I guess we know who are Glen Beck fans.



Yes. The following picture is of a carousel with snowmen, penguins and polar bears riding it. I'm fairly certain that at night, it actually operates.



But let's not be too flippant here. These folks are obviously very serious about Christmas. It's clearly not all about crass commercialism and hollow Hallmark card sentiments. These people remember what Christmas is all about-- Santa kneeling before baby Jesus:



And don't forget the polar bear and penguin jamboree!



They also have their shed decorated! See that Santa with his reindeer? They're on pulleys! They actually fly!



And finally, may I present to you.... Noah's ark:



In the Gospel of Ling-Ling it is written, "And lo, the Gigantic Beagle will leave massive poops on the deck of your ark, Noah. But lest ye suffer the wrath of the Lord, ye shall scoop up the gigantic poops and dispose of them properly in gigantic grocery bags."



And while I was posting this update, Marney was in the process of pulling out her front tooth-- which, of course, has all been captured on film. I'll post up more about our antics with that later.