For the long holiday weekend, we dashed up to Jasksonville, NC to spend some time with our good dear friends Ana and Johnny. Remember what I said a few posts back about
music, pets and kids? And then posted pics of someone else’s pets? Well, I might as well start planning a music post, ‘cuz here come the cute kid pics!
Their daughter, Evelyn is 19 months old. We took her to an easter egg hunt and their local church and the cuteness abounded.
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| Pick up the bright things – got it. |
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| Put them in the bucket that Daddy’s holding – got it. |
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| Get a whole bucketful – got it. |
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| And finally, admire the loot. |
Mostly we just got a lot of good family time – hanging out, playing the the kids, dogs and cat, and celebrating Ana’s birthday. But we also got out a little, too. We hit up the Pine Knoll Shores Aquarium.
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| Reefs ‘n’ things. |
After years of trekking to the forever awesome Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga Tennessee, Atlantans got the Georgia Aquarium: the world largest aquarium. Which is fine and all, but it seems like it’s always completely crushed with crowds. Plus I have the childhood nostalgia thing going for the Tennessee Aquarium (which still boasts the largest freshwater aquarium).
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| Baby sea turtle swimming for its life – it’s being rehabilitated, but even knowing that it was still kind of sad to watch it get nowhere. |
Anyway all that to say that NC takes a completely different approach: several smaller aquariums. I think that is just too cool. Instead of spending a bunch of money and schlepping around a single gigantic aquarium all day, getting sneezed on by children running amok and eventually burning out and being unable to fully enjoy the entire experience, you can go to smaller, quieter, cheap aquariums at different times.
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| Freshwater turtles sunning. |
The NC Aquariums group comprises three aquariums spread out along the coast as well as an educational pier. Each has a different central theme and teaches about different things. The theme of Pine Knolls is following water from the mountains to the sea. It was a short but entertaining experience well worth the $8 entrance fee.
Next, we headed to Fort Macon. Started in 1812, Fort Macon is the third fort to inhabit this little bit of land – one previous iteration was never finished and the other was farther out and consequently washed away.
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| Yes. Emphatic yes. |
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| Somebody loves being held by Adam! |
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| We hung out in the very middle paying a bit of catch and making the other kids really jealous. |
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| Chance playing with Evee. |
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| Ana and Evee. |
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| Walking around in the moat. |
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| Someone wanted to be carried again. 🙂 |
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| The fort is really cool – different levels, rooms in the perimeter and moat walls, all sort of neat things. |
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| The outside walls are 4.5 feet thick. |
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| The fort was deactivated after 1877, but used again briefly for the Spanish-American War. 1903, it was completely abandoned. |
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| In 1924 it was made into a State Park, though it was occupied during WWII (that must have been hilarious for the guys stuck there). |
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| And it has a nice view of the beach that Chance and I later strolled on, counting dead jellyfish and looking for treasure. |
If you’re ever in the area, I definitely recommend checking this place out – there is a lot of interpretation and cool displays in the rooms along the wall of the fort. There’s also historical education to be had in the visitor’s center. And it’s right on the beach, of course.
Anyway, the whole trip was nice. And Jacksonville seems like a cool town. We plan on visiting again (of course!) and hopefully seeing more of it – and our friends, too. Despite spring break and the holiday weekend, we didn’t run into mobs of people. We’re either good at dodging crowds, or this is a nice quite place to get away.
