Houston Dillons: Girls trip to Outer Banks

Lately all of us girls have been ready to go on a trip. As I was talking one day to Mom, we decided it would be fun to take a girls trip. It didn't take much persuasion to get Ashley on board, so we started discussing locations. Mother has always wanted to go to the Outer Banks, NC, so we all agreed that would be a great spot.

We flew into Norfolk, VA and drove to Virginia Beach. We decided to explore the boardwalk there before continuing the drive to our hotel in Outer Banks. Here we are on the boardwalk.

Mom and I on the beach in Virginia Beach.

Poseidon statue on the boardwalk.

We did a little shopping and then headed to Nags Head, where our hotel was. It rained on us as we were driving, but we also got to see this beautiful rainbow.

We made it to Nags head and were all starving, so we headed to eat. Our first walk along the beach ended up being at night, so no pictures. But Ashley was NOT a fan of all the sand crabs.

The next morning we took another walk on the beach. Here is our hotel.

We had a fun room the last two nights with a loft!

Since my mom and sister both love taking pictures, we have some great shots of our morning walk along the beach.

The lounge chairs at our hotel.

Ash caught me sitting and pondering life.

And I caught her getting some great shots of the surf.

Just some more cool shots from Ashley and Mom.

I liked watching the birds fly along the surface of the water. Can you see them?

Me and Ash walking.

After our morning walk along the beach, we set out to see some lighthouses. We were super disappointed when our first lighthouse, the Bodie Island lighthouse, looked like this. Completely covered in scaffolding. Then it started raining. :( After a look at the weather, we decided that if we could find something to do for a few hours, the rain would probably pass. What do you know, there was an outlet mall just two minutes away. :) So we shopped the rain away.

When it stopped raining, we found this spot and just stopped to walk and take a few pictures.

We also took some fun pictures of ourselves.

Love this one of Mom!

Funny, of all the ones we took of me, I liked this one the best! Hehe

I found myself watching these two take pictures a lot.

The cool thing about them loving to take pictures is that we have some awesome pictures like these:

Just fun!

We finally continued on the drive, hopeful to see a pretty lighthouse.

We all fell in love with all the trees. So pretty!

Just a fun sign I found along the way!

Much to our delight, we found the Cape Hatteras lighthouse and NO scaffolding!

Once again, the photographers at work!

Cool looking sky

We found this....took some time to interpret. Not sure what we were supposed to interpret, but we did it anyway!

That night we stopped for dinner along the way home. We won't go into details about the first place we stopped at, but we will say don't always trust Urbanspoon. We DID finally find a place with awesome hush puppies, great food and the cutest little waitress I've ever seen. All without the help of any apps.

The next morning's view of the beach from our room.

We discovered this little place the day before when we stopped for a little snack. The deli meat was so yummy that we went back for sandwiches before heading to the beach. If you are ever in Nags Head, eat here!

I'm not even a big "sandwich person," but this was SO yummy! And Cheerwine, the best cherry soda I think I've ever had.

After our yummy sandwiches, we headed to the beach to play and chill.

A rough life.

Ashley and I had a blast playing in the waves. We noticed that the water got deep VERY quickly (especially compared to Galveston!) We were probably only 10-15 feet out and could barely touch. Can you see us?

Recovering from the big strong waves.

After we'd all had our fill of the beach, we cleaned up and headed out to try and find one more lighthouse. We stopped along the way in Duck (yup, that is the name of the town) to shop at these boardwalk shops. What a beautiful view!