Just a few days after school let out for the summer in Hendricks County, Indiana, our family packed up our minivan and drove 825 miles southeast to a little sliver of North Carolina land just off the coast of the Atlantic Ocean called the Outer Banks. 

These are our stories.

Day Four

We started our day by getting some family photos taken on the beach by a professional photographer from Shooters at the Beach. We had to dodge a little bit of rain, but the combination of posed and candid photos turned out great. We look forward to ordering some prints for our home.

After some breakfast at The Dunes restaurant in Nags Head, we headed over to Roanoke Island to the Dare County Regional Airport in the town of Manteo for an air tour of the Outer Banks, courtesy of Barrier Island Aviation.

Barrier Island Aviation offers air tours in a three-passenger Cessna or in a two-passenger biplane with an open cockpit. Since I have a healthy fear of heights and a strong dislike of flying, we opted for the Cessna tour. Otherwise, my wife said, I might startle all the people on the ground with my shrieks of terror as we flew overhead in the biplane.

Neither of my kids had ever flown before, and it wasn't lost on me that their first flights would be over the home of The First Flight. I don't want my daughters to learn a fear of heights or flight from me, so I put on my big boy pants and prayed that I could keep from sobbing or barfing uncontrollably while in the air.

My youngest daughter went up first with her grandparents for a 30-minute flight. Whether you have one, two or three passengers, it's $135 for 30 minutes. They also offer 10-minute flights for $60 and hour-long flights for $235.

She set the bar high for me, exiting the plane at the end of her flight with a huge smile on her face. Now I was going to have to put on my poker face because it would look bad if my 6-year-old handled flying better than I did.

So my wife, my oldest daughter (8 years old), and I piled into the Cessna, and the pilot made sure we all had our seatbelts on. (Seriously?! Like seatbelts are going to make a difference when we plunge to our death from 90 billion feet in the air?!) 

My youngest had apparently already squealed to the pilot that I was not looking forward to this experience, because the young lady who was going to take us up in this tiny plastic coffin with wings made a point of telling me that everything was going to be just fine, and I could probably release my death grip on the door handle. 

Once we got up in the air, though, MAN was it neat!

It's amazing what a tiny little sliver of land makes up the Outer Banks, out in the middle of water as far as you can see. We all had headsets on so that we could hear each other, and it was fun listening to my daughter in the back seat oo-ing and ah-ing over everything she was seeing.

The pilot pointed out all of the local landmarks as we passed above Roanoke Island, the Wright Brothers Memorial, Jockey's Ridge and Bodie Island lighthouse. She also added interesting facts and history about a variety of spots, so we learned a lot about Outer Banks in the process.

It was a unique experience sitting up with the pilot and looking out the windshield as we flew. I nervously kept a sharp eye out for birds, other planes, UFOs, and anything else that might threaten our safety. I also listened closely to our pilot's communication with the control tower along the way. I couldn't understand the vast majority of what they were saying to each other, but they were both speaking in calm voices, so I assumed that everything was progressing normally for both of them.

As we headed out over Oregon Inlet -- over the water, along the beach -- we hit some turbulence. I'm not sure if my face turning green or my screaming for my mommy tipped off the pilot that I wasn't enjoying the turbulence, but she calmly suggested that I think of the turbulence as potholes in a road.

Surprisingly, that mental image helped. So did the fact that she climbed a little bit to get us out of the turbulence.

We saw our rental home as we passed above our stretch of the beach, and then we circled back around to Roanoke Island, where the pilot landed us like a champ. Again, it's a whole different experience landing in an airplane when you're looking out the windshield at the ground approaching quickly!

My oldest daughter had the same huge grin on her face that my youngest had when we got out of the plane. Their first flight was a huge success and one of their favorite memories from our family vacation in the Outer Banks. 

I can't recommend this activity highly enough for you and your family if you visit the area. It's not terribly costly, and it will create memories for a lifetime, even if you're a big airplane chicken like I am.

We spent the remainder of our afternoon on the beach and made our own dinner at the rental house.

Day 5 of our Outer Banks family vacation held something I was really looking forward to:  a baseball game.

See also:
Days 1 and 2
Day 3

Just a few days after school let out for the summer in Hendricks County, Indiana, our family packed up our minivan and drove 825 miles southeast to a little sliver of North Carolina land just off the coast of the Atlantic Ocean called the Outer Banks.

These are our stories.

Day Three

We started our first full day in the Outer Banks by spending the morning at the beach.

The water was pretty chilly, but after acclimating to it slowly, it wasn't bad.

It was a nice gentle slope out into the water, and there was a big sand bar several feet out into the water, so my elementary school daughters could go quite a ways out into the ocean and still only be knee-deep in water.

The house we rented had some boogie boards available for us to use, so my kids took those out and rode some small waves, shrieking with joy every time the water carried them a few feet.

Further out in the water, bigger kids and adults could catch substantially bigger waves to ride on their boogie boards, but since this was my girls' first time in the ocean, we kept them close to the shore and under intense adult supervision to prevent any mishaps with rip currents.

By the afternoon, the ocean was getting fairly choppy, so we moved our water activities to the pool at our rental house.

After a swim, we got out and about in the towns of Nags Head and Kill Devil Hills to do some souvenir shopping. We discovered that it's not difficult at all to find OBX merchandise.

After hitting a few souvenir shops, we stopped in at Dirty Dick's Crab House in Nags Head to get one of their funny t-shirts for a friend of mine, and then we stopped in at Try My Nuts in Kill Devil Hills to secure another funny t-shirt. 

The lady at Try My Nuts, though, offered us samples of some of their fantastic products while we were there, and we wound up taking home a couple bags of White Trash (a mix of pretzels, crisp cereals and pecans covered in a creamy white chocolate confection) and a bag of milk chocolate covered trio of nuts. Yummy! In addition to their specialty of nuts, they also have candies, spices, rubs, hot sauces and more. Definitely worth a peek inside.

We ended our day with dinner at Mulligan's Raw Bar & Grille in Nags Head. We were seated on their second-story outdoor patio that provided a nice view of the ocean. My wife and I ordered different variations of local shrimp -- my wife got the coconut shrimp dinner, and I got the shrimp dinner -- and those shrimp were huge and delicious!  Many nationwide restaurant chains offer tiny, chewy, tasteless shrimp, but with Mulligan's getting their shrimp fresh from North Carolina, their offering is a shrimp lover's dream.

Mulligan's was our big meal splurge on our trip.  Our shrimp dinners were $24 a piece, and by the time we added a couple of kids' meals, four soft drinks, tax and gratuity, our final expenditure was pushing $100 for four of us.

It was a fantastic dinner with a great view of the water, though, and worth the splurge.

Up next:  Day Four.

See also:  Days 1 and 2.

Just a few days after school let out for the summer in Hendricks County, Indiana, our family packed up our minivan and drove 825 miles southeast to a little sliver of North Carolina land just off the coast of the Atlantic Ocean called the Outer Banks.

These are our stories.

Days One and Two:

The road trip to the Outer Banks took us about 15 hours over the course of two days. My wife and I had our 8-year-old and 6-year-old daughters with us, so we stopped for the night in Waynesboro, Virginia, after the first nine hours of our voyage.

Our route took us through southern Ohio, across West Virginia, and then through north-central Virginia before dropping down into North Carolina.

Among the most memorable sites on our trip was the State Capitol building (pictured below) in Charleston, West Virginia. The entire dome of the capitol building is gilded in gold, making for a striking contrast against the beautiful forestry and mountainous terrain of the city. (The building was also constructed with Indiana limestone, which this Hoosier appreciates.)

Our drive took us through the Commonwealth of Virginia -- my first time setting foot on Virginia soil.

Virginia is a really pretty state. The terrain continues to be mountainous, and much of our trip along Interstate 64 was lined with tall evergreens. Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, this setting was quite appealing to me.

The people of Virginia are very friendly, too. Thick southern accents are commonplace, as are classic southern values. It seemed like an entirely different world in Virginia, yet it was just a day's drive from our home in the Midwest.

The only hitch in our journey was bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way from Richmond to Newport News in Virginia on our second day.

We never figured out what the logjam was about, other than we saw lots of vehicles with kayaks, bicycles and other outdoor equipment along with lots of signs for Virginia Beach on our way. And we were passing through on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. It was probably just a case of poor timing on our part.

The last several miles to our vacation rental house took us through a bunch of little North Carolina towns before we crossed a bridge onto Bodie (pronounced "body") Island -- a long peninsula that's home to the towns of Duck, Southern Shores, Kitty Hawk, Nags Head and one of my all-time favorite town names:  Kill Devil Hills.

We stayed in a two-level house (pictured above) with some extended family during our vacation. The house had a pool, hot tub and volleyball court in the back yard, and it was a 100-yard walk to the beach.

From any of the three levels of porches, you could see the ocean from our house, and the view from the top porch was especially impressive.

Once we got settled and unpacked, we headed to the beach. The sand is very soft, and since our rental house was part of a private beach, there was hardly anyone else out there.

The air temperature during the first weekend in June was a very comfortable 72 degrees with a near-constant wind that cooled things even more. I, being warm-natured, was perfectly comfortable, but my wife and daughters needed sweaters and sweatshirts to keep the chill off.

The beach is easily walked in bare feet. Seashells are commonplace, but they're not such an obstruction that you can't walk on the beach without cutting your feet to shreds.

Hermit crabs are common on the beach, but they're just fun to watch dig their holes in the sand. They didn't bother us.

There are lots of pelicans out over the water, and it's cool to watch them dive into the ocean, looking for a meal.

My oldest daughter hunted for seashells like it was her job, and I continued a family tradition of tricking her into tasting the water, since it was her first trip to an ocean. Her reaction was the same as mine when I was a kid and my dad tricked me into doing the same thing. More than thirty years later, I can still vividly remember that nasty taste in my mouth.

We walked on the beach until dark (9 p.m. or so) and then hung out pool side in our back yard.

(TIP:  We got chewed up by mosquitos, gnats and no-see-ums after dark, and citronella candles didn't do a whole lot of good for us. If you head to OBX for your own family vacation, bring insect repellent.)

We'll see what Day Three of our OBX vacation brings.

I was a guest columnist for the May 2014 issue of the new Hendricks County Home magazine. This is the first few paragraphs of that column, along with a link to read the rest of it on Hendricks County Home's website.

A dad’s role in society is clearly defined: we provide and protect.

Dads are supposed to work all day and bring home the bacon while moms handle all of that child-raising nonsense. If there’s a spider, we’ll kill it. If there’s a threat to our family’s safety, we’ll shoot it. But other than that, don’t bother us with anything else, like parenting.

Children should be seen and not heard, and if they’re interrupting our manly relaxation routine of sipping an adult beverage in front of the TV after a long day at the salt mine, they shouldn’t be seen, either.

A concept that’s even more foreign to men than being an active dad is that of being a stay-at-home dad (SAHD). Stay-at-home moms are an accepted and valued segment of our society, but stay-at-home dads are “Mr. Moms” – less of a man than the rest of us.

SAHDs are those wimps who are so worthless that they can’t even get a job and support their own family, so they’re left behind to do women’s work. They’re not real men, and we condescendingly snort at them to make sure they understand their place on the testosterone totem pole.

Click here to read the rest of this post on Hendricks County Home.

I recently took my kids down to the Vandalia Trail between Amo and Coatesville to check it out for a Visit Hendricks County blog post, and it was an experience worth sharing with the Villagers of They're Our Kids.  What follows is the first couple paragraphs of my VHC post, along with a link to the rest of it on their website.

Bikers, hikers, walkers and equestrians:  if you haven’t yet experienced the Vandalia Trail — or if you haven’t experienced it in awhile — it’s time to visit Hendricks County and see all the improvements made to the three-mile stretch between the towns of Amo and Coatesville, Ind.

The Vandalia Trail is built along the east-west line of the former Vandalia Railroad and currently sports 12.3 miles of continuous trail for hikers and bikers between Greencastle and Amo. The three miles of rustic rail-trail between Coatesville and Amo offer an additional parallel trail for equestrians.

Click here to read the rest of my blog post on Visit Hendricks County.