As we got closer to the floor repair vacation, we began to assemble all the necessary stuff to go to the beach for a week. Back in the old days, if you were going to the Outer Banks of North Carolina for a vacation, you had to take almost everything you were going to need with you. You had to pack boxes and boxes and coolers full of food because there were no grocery stores on the islands.

There were a couple of gas stations that also stocked some very high priced basic food stuff (sandwich meat, bread, beer) but, if you really planned to eat dinners in, you needed to bring everything you needed. This included all your condiments like ketchup and mustard and all your clean up stuff like dish soap, towels and sponges.

It was pretty much a tradition to spend weeks packing up boxes and bags with everything you could possibly want for a weeks stay. Then you went down to the beach for a week and ate as much as you could so you wouldn't have to bring anything back.

Now, the Outer Banks has really changed (not all for the good, unfortunately). There are many grocery stores on the island as well as high end shoppes, movie theatres, hundreds of restaurants and tons and tons of tourists. It is much easier to spend a week there now then it used to be so even the tourists, that could never have roughed it in the old days, come down now in droves.

God Bless America.

Enjoy!