We spent four days in the North Carolina Outer Banks at Cape Hatteras as part one of our family vacation this summer.  We drove up on Monday and enjoyed lunch at Sandbar Grill in Buxton before checking into our hotel. We tried to go and play at the beach but unfortunately a tropical storm was hitting the island and forced us to retreat to the pool.  The next day it was stormy again with winds between 20-30mph so we decided to do some sight seeing instead of try the beach again.  We went to Cape Hatteras Nation Seashore and climbed the lighthouse.  There was some amazing views from the tallest light house on the eastern seashore.  We are very proud of AJ for climbing and taking pictures from the top of the lighthouse, he was very brave.  We explored the museum in the old lighthouse quarters and attended a very interesting talk about barrier islands given by one of the rangers.  Afterwards we walked the sight of the lighthouse before it was moved a half mile inland in 1999 which is now beach.  After lunch it was still too windy to go to the beach so we took the rangers advice and took the kids to the Palmico Sound to swim.  It was still windy ‘as all get out’ but at least we weren’t getting pelted with sand as much and a fun bonus I got to drive my Subaru right onto the beach (which is legal in NC). After we got tired of the wind in the Sound we headed back to the pool.  The kiddos and I had some dessert after dinner and we had a family walk on the beach when the winds finally died down with just a quick pause to get Alex into his swim suit because he promptly took his clean clothes and freshly showered self into the surf.  Wednesday we got lucky and finally had good beach weather, 86 degrees and only 6-10mph winds!  We spent 7 hours at the beach, starting at 9am.  We built sand castles, buried children, swam in the water and walked out to the sandbridge 100 feet in to be standing in ankle deep water after being in 5 feet of water, caught fishies and put them in buckets, and went boogie boarding.  It was a busy and fun day at the beach.  On our last day it was raining so we went to The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum to learn about shipwrecks and enjoy what they had to offer.  After a delicious lunch at Bruxton Munch we drove home.  It was a good vacation even with the storm!