Vacation post 1: Roundabouts and Turnarounds

After spending most of the day on the road, we finally arrived at Oak Island about mid-afternoon yesterday. Although none of us really wanted to have woken up as early as we did, we left the house in the mindset that this was, in fact, vacation...and we treated it that way from the first step. Rather than grabbing a quick bowl of cereal and some fruit before we left the house, we stopped at a Cracker Barrel along the way and enjoyed a nice "sit-down" breakfast. That's something we rarely ever do.

I guess I should backtrack just a little bit. I'm on vacation this week. All week long, with my mother and my little sister. I spend a fairly substantial amount of time with my family, I suppose you could say, but there's a big difference between living and visiting with someone, and vacationing with them. I went into this trip, too, with high expectations. I haven't been on a vacation in over a year. I've taken days off from work to pursue fun diversions, like concerts and whatnot, but the closest I've had to a vacation was a weekend hiking trip I took with a friend back in February. My last "real" vacation was the trip my family took to the Monterey Bay in California, a graduation present for my sister and I, some time ago (I got my bachelor degree, and she made the all-important goal of graduating from high school within a week of each other!). Furthermore, we were going to Oak Island, a fairly quiet little island off the coast of NC, with one side facing the ocean, and the other side facing the sound. It doesn't have nearly the same glamour and glitz as the Outer Banks (which are further up the coastline, toward Virginia), but it's a lovely little island. Why did it matter so much that we were going to Oak Island? My mum and sis have gone several times in the past few years, for a weekend or a few days, or occasionally a slightly longer stay, but because of a demanding school schedule and an almost-as-demanding work schedule, I hadn't been able to go along with them to the beach since sometime in high school. I was about past due for a healthy dose of sand and surf!

The route we took was a pretty interesting one. We left home about 8 in the morning, and travelled east, reaching Oak Island via Asheboro...by way of the NC Zoo! What is this? Going to the zoo on the WAY to vacation? That's like two trips in one! Madness!

We had been to the zoo two other times this summer, but both trips had been last-minute, spur of the moment ideas, and we'd only been able to see about half the exhibits each time. The NC Zoo is split roughly in half - there's a North America exhibit, and an Africa exhibit, and right in the middle is Junction Plaza and just a little beyond that is the Sonora Desert exhibit (technically part of North America, but it's set so far off from everything else, it seems like it's own separate entity!). I love desert wildlife (although I'm not sure if it's a symptom or a cause of my love for the book "Dune" by Frank Herbert), and I'd been very disappointed that on our last couple trips, we hadn't had time to trek into the center of the zoo to see it. This time, though, my patience was rewarded, and we got to see Sonoran creatures in all their glory! The coolest part was something I wasn't expecting - there was a section of the exhibit that was down a darkened hallway and led to displays of nocturnal animals! I was able to get within feet of fascinating little beasties like sidewinders and couatis...and even real, honest to goodness vampire bats! I tried to get some photos, but as I'm sure you can imagine, camera + dark room does NOT equal very good opportunities, especially since I didn't want to turn on my camera's flash and potentially startle the animals.

Equally cool, although not the center of my obsession like the desert exhibit was, was a recently-added feature of the zoo. Called "Acacia Station", this new site is an observation deck that affords a great veiw of a portion of the Africa exhibit, especially the habitat where the giraffes, zebras, and ostriches roam. That itself is pretty cool, but the real draw is that during the middle of the day, giraffe feeding takes place there! My understanding is that eventually Acacia Station will be a paid attraction ($2 admission during meal-times, or something like that), but at the moment it's free. Even if a giraffe doesn't come and get right up in yo' grill, I say it's still worth checking out for the view!

And that was the first leg of our vacation trip. It was a hot, hot day, but there's something about being at a zoo that always makes me feel younger and more playful in spite of oppressive weather. Once we felt like we'd sweated enough, though (and had made sure to see the Sonora Desert exhibit!), we trooped back to the car for the main thrust of the trip. A quick mid-trip stop at Sonic for refreshment (I'd never had their cherry limeade before; it was pretty good!), and then on to Oak Island!