gnats and heat and sunburn (oh my!)

The day started at 5:15 when little miss sunshine woke up talking up in her loft bedroom (she slept soundly up until then, though, so I'm very thankful). She was talking but I let her go, hoping she'd fall back asleep, which she did. Until 6:00. Woo hoo! But really I can't complain because I was so worried she'd have trouble sleeping and she did great.

We had a gnat infestation in our room this morning. It was horrible--ever take a shower only to find bugs on you?? Nasty! We found out at breakfast that we weren't the only ones. There are forest fires on the main land that are blowing smoke over onto the island. It's really hazy and smells like a campfire at certain parts of the day (like the middle of the night when I woke up last night and thought something was on fire in the room and walked around for quite awhile sniffing, trying to figure out what it was!). Anyway, the smoke is evidently driving the bugs inside. They were especially bad in the bathroom. I called the front desk and they said they had spray, so my husband went to get it and sprayed all over, killing many of them (our bathtub was covered in dead bugs. Gross!). When we came back from our morning excursions they had come to clean our room and the dead bugs (and most of the live ones, too) were gone. I hope tomorrow morning is better.

This is a picture of my daughter's toy, which seemed to attract quite a few for some odd reason.

This morning we headed to Kitty Hawk, to the Wright Brothers Memorial. It was interesting, but it's almost all outside with no shade, and it was close to 100 degrees again today and the sun was just scorching. We were all lathered in sunscreen, but I still managed to get a sunburned face. Ouch. Here's some of what we saw.

This is the monument--it's up on a tall hill, which we walked up...it was hot.

This rock says something about their first flight.

This is a replica of their first plane. I chose this picture because R did a lot of sitting down in the middle of walking today--she was tired and probably hot and she kept getting sand in her shoes! The last time I'll put sandals on her when we're out and about doing sight seeing!

She couldn't wait for her turn to stand behind this--I had to hold her up on my knee so she'd be high enough to peek out above it.

We then went to a state park with huge sand dunes, but didn't go climb them because my husband said it would be like hiking in the Sahara Desert. Too bad it decided to be this hot while we were here. We seem to have that problem a lot--last year's trip to Wyoming was very similar in that respect.

Our little one got fussy around lunch time so we came back to the hotel and put her to bed (you know she's ready when she's asking to go nigh night!) I doubted her ability to go to sleep in that sunny loft, but she did great and slept for two hours! My husband napped and I read the paper. It's strange to have down time in the middle of the day on vacation, because usually it's go-go-go, but a little one forces you to slow down, and it's kind of nice.

When she woke up she was all fired up to go "simmum," because I was putting her bathing suit on her, but we kept telling her we were going to the beach (simmum to her is done in the pool). We couldn't get out of the room fast enough for her. When we passed the pool and kept walking toward the beach she was a little sad. But once we got her settled with her sand toys at the beach she had a good time. She was still scared, though, and had to be held anywhere near the water, and even when she was sitting in the sand she wanted to sit on my lap because the water would occasionally come up and get her feet a little wet, and that was scary too, I guess. She liked counting shells (over and over and over--and there are a lot of shells to count, trust me!)

When we came up to the hotel we stopped at the pool and she and I went in, briefly. She was still scared of that, too, and much preferred sitting on the edge with her feet in the water.

After an early dinner we set off for one of the lighthouses on the Outer Banks. This one is the Bodie Island Lighthouse. It was just closing as we got there, so we just got to look around on the outside. We're going back tomorrow on our way back from Cape Hatteras, where we're going to see their more famous lighthouse.