A Lighthouse and Two Beaches

On Monday, we drove about an hour south of Kill Devil Hills, to Cape Hatteras.  We were interested in seeing the lighthouse there.

The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is the tallest lighthouse in the United States.

 It stands about 12 stories high!

 So, Jon thought it would be great for me and the munchkins to go inside and climb the stairs to the top!  Jon does not like heights at all, so he stayed behind.

 There are 248 iron stairs to climb to get to the top.

 The munchkins did great climbing up and even encouraged me (repeatedly) to keep going.  It was quite a hike!

 But we all made it to the top and what a view it was when we got there!

 Here's Jon after he saw us and waved to us from the ground!

 This is the actual light fixture at the top of the lighthouse.

 A view from the top looking down at the stairs and that's not even all of them!

 Once again, the munchkins were troopers and hardly stopped on the way down.  I was amazed at how well they did climbing up and then going back down all those steps!  

(For the record, my legs were pretty sore the next day from those stairs!)

This was the last thing we saw before walking out of the lighthouse.

 After we left Cape Hatteras, we made our way to another beach located on Pea Island.  When we arrived, we saw this... a storm on the north side and 

 this, a beautiful partly cloudy sky on the south side.   We decided to stay and see if the storm was headed our way or if it would just stay north of us.

 We stayed for another half hour or so and then it started to pour down rain, so we left and drove back to Kill Devil Hills and had a few hours of fun on that beach.

Buddy had a good time making a mountain out of the washed up seaweed on the beach.

He was working on that for quite a while.

 Jon showed Buddy how to throw a frisbee

 Way to go Buddy!

 Sissy liked to walk on the beach and, for the most part, stay out of the water unless Jon carried her out.

One of the many seagulls we saw while at the beach.

A view of the sunset that evening from our condo.  Not the best picture of how beautiful it was, but it was another great day filled with fun memories!