Back from busy camping weekend!

[Gone-Camping]

Well, it's been since Memorial Day since I last went camping, so we were way over due!! We had a great holiday weekend in Cape Hatteras. We were in site #9 at Ocean Waves Campground. Despite my fears of Hurricane Frances coming this way, it just never happened. Matter of fact, it might have shortened things had it come ashore quicker than it did.
 
But the Hurricane did effect us to some degree though. There were surf advisories up because of Frances, which indicated rip tides and heavy surf. So we knew exactly what to do, head south! Yes, when at Cape Hatteras, if you go far enough south (south of the Hatteras light) you'll find calmer waters, and actually wider beaches! While the surf was crashing hard at the sandbar, by the time it got in towwards shore it was quite mellow. The undertow was quite strong, but nothing we couldn't handle. The kids were limited to waste deep, but was never a problem. The Park Rangers that patrol the beach didn't seemed concerned, they were not kicking anyone out of the water, so that means everything was good to go!
 
I got stuck in the sand once, while accessing the beach at Billie Mitchell field, there is a turn-off just before the NPS campground which is a beach ramp. I should have figured there was going to be trouble, right at the entrace there were 2 vehicles stuck less than 100 feet from the pavement! I followed ACER onto the beach, we both have Grand Cherokee's, he zipped right by the two that were stuck, I bogged down right inbetween them! I got kind of concerned briefly, but knew enough to just back-up in my tracks, drop it into low range, and gun it on through there again. That was the closest and only time my Jeep has ever bogged down in the sand!
 
By the way, the water was so tame down here, that I spent several hours actually in the water, more so on Sunday afternoon than I have in the last four years COMBINED!!! Oh, I'm also sun-burned all over....the sun screen only works for a limited time!!!

[Gone-Camping]

Addendum...

The weather couldn't have been better, warm and sunny when I arrived mid afternoon on Friday. I got the hybrid set-up quickly, and then went to the task of finding something cold to drink. Since this campground has cable tv service, I checked the weather channel for Frances updates, and local weax as well. They kept indicating that we'd get 20-30 mph winds, but that never happened.

Saturday and Sunday we had great weather too, warm & sunny with temps in the 80's...nice sea breaze even despite continued forecasts of 20-30 mph winds, they never materialized.

However, last night (Sunday night) around 10 pm we had a tv outside and were watching the race at ACER's motor home (next site over) when it started to sprinkle a little. Then it turned into a steady rain, so ACER brought his tv inside, and we adjourned to my Hybrid. Then the bottom fell out of the sky, with a solid down pour for about 2 hours. We stayed high & dry, one kid in the back bunk playing a gameboy, one of the sofa watching the race with me. Never did get crowded in that trailer, even with 4 people in there!

Poor people in the tents didn't have it so lucky though. There were about 5-6 tenters there, all of them got soaked as the ground here is level, and no place for water to run off too. I saw plenty of air mattress and sleeping bags strung out over picnic tables this morning as these people made an attempt to dry out!!! I assume there will probably be a PU in their near future!!!