Well, we're home.
We had arranged for a photo shoot Friday morning, so we met our photographer at the National Park Service campground and took the trail to the beach around 8:00. It was SO HOT. Hotter than it's been all week. We had to pose with our faces in the sun for part of it, so it will be interesting to see how the pictures turn out. I'm actually pretty impressed that we found a photographer at all! I had been looking online for months but couldn't find anyone on Ocracoke, and the photographers based on other islands or the mainland charged a hefty fee for travel (or didn't travel at all). Then one day I got the bright idea to send a message to the island newspaper to see if the staff there could recommend anyone ... and that's how I got connected with Crystal, who is the photographer for the paper. Having followed the paper online since the first time we visited, I was already familiar with her work, so I was really happy when she agreed to take our pictures. It was a great photo shoot. She had the boys climbing dunes, racing along the water, and doing all sorts of fun stuff. I can't wait to see what we end up with!
After the pictures, we went back to the house and cleaned up and started doing laundry and loading up the car. Then we looked at the ferry schedule and decided we didn't want to sit around waiting for laundry to finish, so we loaded the wet stuff into a garbage bag and shoved it in the van. We left the house at 12:45, made a quick stop at the rental office to turn in our keys, and made it to the ferry terminal in time for the 1:05 ferry back to Hatteras. From there, we drove ... pretty much forever. Mike drove all day and into the night, and around 4 or 5 this morning, he woke me up because he was too tired to keep going. So I woke up, got some coffee (thank heavens for 24-hour Starbucks along the tollways!), and got us the rest of the way home. We pulled in around 8:30 this morning ... which is when we would have been leaving Ocracoke if we had stayed for the full length of our reservation. We're feeling pretty pleased with ourselves right now though, because Saturday morning departures mean long lines for the ferry and a mad scramble as everyone tries to leave the island at the same time. (Most of the rentals are Saturday to Saturday.) Anyway, we all fell into bed for a while, then the boys and I headed over to my grandpa's house for my cousin Brady's (high school) graduation open house. There's still a lot of unpacking to do, but it's good to be back home.
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