Back to Reality (VACATION PHOTO DUMP!)

So as I mentioned in my last post, I was away in the Outer Banks for all of last week. Let me tell you – the vacation was much needed. I didn’t realize how busy I had been this summer and it was heavenly just to sit back and relax all week. Corolla, NC is absolutely gorgeous and it didn’t hurt that I was with Chris and his family for the week 🙂

If you’ve never been to OBX, it basically your typical beach vacation town. It mostly all huge beach houses, with a few resorts scattered through. There’s the beach on one side of the island and the sound on the other. Absolutely stunning. Besides the water, there’s also a ton of other things to do on the island as well. Everything from amazing restaurants to mini-golf to movie theaters are throughout the island. We were situated in Corolla, which is where Chris’s family home is. Corolla is nicely stuck in the middle of everything, so we really didn’t have to drive more than 5 minutes to anything. 

Some of the highlights of the week were:

• Eating dinner at the Sunset Grille for our 10 month anniversary. The restaurant is right on the sound and Chris planned it so we went right as sunset was happening and we had a window seat so we got to see most of the sunset, which was beautiful (until a giant cloud got in the way).
• Taking a nature walk through one of the maritime forests at the top of the island, where there was some beautiful views looking out at the sound when you got to the end of the path.
• Kayaking! I absolutely love to kayak and we went on a kayaking tour held by the Outer Banks Nature Conservatory. It was a nice hour and a half long tour of some of the sound where we got to hear about the wildlife that call the sound their home. 
• We also hauled our butts out of bed one morning at 6 and went to the beach to watch the sunrise. It was gorgeous when the sun crested right over the water. Stunning doesn’t even begin to describe it. 
• Sadly, we went jet-skiing as well. Totally not my thing. I was convinced I was going to be thrown off the entire time. But nevertheless, Chris loved it so I suffered through. 

Overall, the vacation was amazing. Great location, great people, and great fun. The only bad part was that I gained back almost all the weight I lost this summer! It was totally worth it though. 

Below are a ton of the pictures that I took over the course of the week. You can find some of the things mentioned above in them!