Vacation Day 3 - Monday, June 15

We had originally intended to spend Monday at Topsail Beach with our friends the Grady's.  A few days before the vacation though, we changed the plans because Marnie didn't feel it would be a good idea to take Derrick back on another car ride the day after driving to New Bern.  The trip to New Bern for them on Sunday was about 3 hours.  The trip to Topsail Beach was about 90 minutes.  So we rescheduled the Topsail trip for Tuesday.

Somehow, Monday we ended up driving about an hour and 15 minutes to go to Pine Knoll Shores (on Emerald Isle) to go to one of the North Carolina Aquarium's.  This would end up being the only time Derrick (20 months old) left the resort.  Everyone actually had a great time, and Derrick really loved the aquarium.  Marnie and Bob took Derrick back to the resort after a couple of hours and the rest of us went to Fort Macon State Park on the northern end of the island.  We had about an hour to kill before dinner, so while Adrienne and Bill went to check out the civil war era fort, Emily and Erin and Lin and I hung out on the beach.  Emily and I flew our kites and walked along the shore.  Because it's on the end of the island, swimming is not only dangerous here because of the currents, but actually prohibited.  They even say "no wading" though we did get our feet wet!

Finally 5:30 rolled around and we packed up the truck and headed to The Channel Marker, a wonderful seafood restaurant on the sound side of Atlantic beach.  This was our third trip to this restaurant and the first that it wasn't "awesome".  The appetizers were still great, my she-crab soup was awesome.  I thought the crabcakes were great but Adrienne said they weren't as good as last time.  I actually ordered a pound of peel-n-eat shrimp and it was overcooked.  Oh well.  I think we'll probably still go back.

After dinner, we headed back to New Bern for a good night's sleep.