NC Vacation 2011

Last Sunday morning at 5 AM we headed out of PA on our way to North Carolina. Which involved 4 of us sleeping on and of and my mom driving. But at a little after 4 PM we arrived in Corolla, NC. Our hotel had an outdoor pool, an indoor pool, a lazy river, and a private beach!

We all enjoyed the beach, our two guests had never been to the beach. But the next day we went on Bob's Wild Horse Adventure Tours, to see the wild horses (ponies). With the guaranty that if you do not see a wild horse you get your money back. So we load up on these trucks in the back there is 3 rows of seats, 4 places in each row. With a canopy over you and buckled up, due to NC strict seat-belt laws. But you start driving through town, then there is less and less houses until you are just on this little sand (not dirt, sand) road, surrounded by dunes and vegetation. Then you start seeing signs warning you this is a beach access road  and do not drive on it unless you have 4-wheel drive. And suddenly you are driving on the beach! And the tour guide starts talking and pointing things out.

Like these stumps we all labeled drift wood are actually part of a forest that was killed by the ocean. But then we saw our first horse.

And our tour guide asked if we wanted to know its name and of course we all said yes and he answered " No Refund!" and then he said "There is 109 horse here and all have a name, but I don't  know them. But the 109 doesn't count foals, they only count after they have reached a year old." So after giving us time to take pictures, we moved on. And our next stop was these signs:

 

At the first sign the guide stopped and said "If you where a couldn't read English and you saw that sign, what would you think? You would think if you stepped in fire you loss have your half your leg!" Actual there is unexploded mines in the dunes, that where placed there in WW2 so you don't walk/drive in the dunes (also it's bad for the ecosystem). But we continued on and saw (what I'm pretty sure) was the same horse from different angles:

Next is a sand dune thing which when a channel ran through by it sailors though pennies at the bottom of it for luck:

Another horse:

Out in these dunes where houses only accessible only by the beach road, here is one our guide called the Christmas house:

By that section of houses was this little cutey who I have a bunch of pictures of but here is the best of them:

Just a little down the road was an osprey nest:

 Then right next to some houses was this mare and her foal and then stallion, foal, and mare all together:

Another band:

Some pelicans:

This was formerly a cost guard building that a local company has restored and uses for their office:

 

Now this house was just weird, it's a boat on wheels that apparently leaves to be used in parades. Also they had "shrunken heads" in their yard:

 

And this house belongs to the driver (owner?) of the gravedigger (a monster truck):

 

And this is the mail vehicle, which we say driving around on the beach, but here it is loading up:

  And here is another band made up of 4 horses:

A few days later we left, but here is one last picture from the town of a house I found intresting:

And these is the where the first flight took place, Kitty Hawk:

After we left Kitty Hawk, we went to a North Carolina aquarium but I didn't get any good pictures there. Then we went to New Bern but I'll continue that in another post because this one is getting rather long.