After packing our things and leaving Oregon Inlet, we stopped by Jockey’s Ridge State Park to see its star attraction: a sand dune. The dune at Jockey’s Ridge is the tallest active dune system on the East coast.
We kicked our shoes off and began the long hot hike up to check things out. From the top, we watched the hang gliders having a gliding-distance competition on nearby dune. It wasn’t very impressive, as they only managed to glide about 50 yds to the bottom of the dune. We wondered why they would even bother hauling all of their gear out for such a short ride. We had fun running and jumping in the sand for a while before hiking down and getting back on the road.
[wpvideo LZZHU1xB]
As we continued driving up the island, we came to the Wright Brothers memorial. We briefly pulled in, saw the monument from the campervan, and then kept on going. Once we were back on the mainland, we stumbled upon the home of Grave Digger, the most famous monster truck of them all. The original owner and driver of Grave Digger, Dennis Anderson, no longer lives there, but the site still houses the race shop, a restaurant, petting zoo, monster truck rides, and countless other tourist attractions.
A little further down the road we pulled into Currituck BBQ for lunch. Then it was on to Costco before finally arriving at First Landing State Park in Virginia Beach. It is a huge park with a couple of different campgrounds. We, of course, picked one near the beach. The beach there isn’t on the Atlantic, but rather Chesapeake Bay. We didn’t plan on Cooper and Brooks swimming in the water while we watched the sun go down, but they had other plans and were soon splashing around in their underwear.
The next day was HOT. We had not used the air conditioner much at that point, but ran it all day and part of the night during our stay at First Landing. The park had a nice laundry room, which we desperately needed to use. The park also had a nice playground that the kids enjoyed to themselves. Cooper and Brooks befriended a retired couple and their chocolate lab in the campsite next to us. Like most people we met on the road, they were really surprised/happy/supportive to hear about the trip we were on with the kids. Not that we really cared, but it was always nice to hear affirmation from people further along in life that what we were doing was awesome – something they would do if given a chance to go back to when their kids were little and do it all over again.
