Dahlem / Bounds beach Vacation

The last week of July we rented a beach house in Kure Beach, NC.  Lindsay and Aaron Bounds flew in from Albuquerque with their 14 month old daughter Emerson to join us.

Before we headed out from Raleigh to Kure Beach, Jim read a book to Avery:

And Lindsay got some good bonding time with the Avery:

Once we arrived at the beach house we put Avery into her swimsuit and got ready for the beach

We had a nice beach pop up tent that Avery used to keep her of the sun:

Then we visited a former Civil War fort, Ft Fischer.  Aaron and Emerson climbed up a bunker to see an old cannon:

From the top there was a nice view of the area and the intercoastal waterway:

 

And Aaron decided that signs don't mean anything!

Then we headed over to a gazebo where everyone took advantage of the photo op:

Then out of nowhere the skies opened up to a nice refreshing downpour:

The next day we took our car onto a ferry:

And headed over to the town of Southport and walked the old town:

There was a lot of places dedicated to a "James Harper" in Southport which we thought was neat:

Then we stopped for lunch at a nice restaurant that overlooked the harbor:

We went out onto a peir:

And from the peir we were surprised to see down in the sand a huge 6' sting ray washed up on the shore!

The next day we had Lindsay take a nice family picture of us:

We finished by waking up early the next morning to see the sun rise over the ocean, and had breakfast on the beach (well Avery had breakfast with her bottle!)