Can’t You See the Sunshine?

We had such a fantastic week. When you are living it, it doesn’t all feel fantastic. But I’m going to see the good and see all things coming together for good this week. Because I get to choose that.

We stopped by the Duke student store to get Griffin some Duke shorts and took a picture as we were leaving and unplugging the car, which had an excellent view of Duke Chapel.

We got to our place on Roanoke Island, in the city of Manteo. Manteo is named for the man from the Croatoan Tribe who converted to Christianity in 1587, traveled to England and back to the Jamestown colony, and acted as translator for the settlers. The place we stayed, Lennon Cottage, was built by the owner’s great grandfather a couple of centuries later. It was just a beautiful lot right across the street from the Roanoke Sound with a giant southern magnolia tree in the front yard.

We went to the Wright Brother’s Memorial and visitor’s center. The visitor’s center wasn’t there when we visited 17 years ago.

But the memorial looks the same. It was astounding to us that they built it in 1928, only 25 years after the first flight. Orville attended the dedication. Wilbur had died by then. By 1928 people were making trans-Atlantic flights. It was also fun to see historic planes landing and taking off on the airstrip they have built next to the monument. I think that is new too.

This used to be a sandy dune at the turn of the last century when the first test flights were being made. They have planted sedge grasses and cactuses to stabilize the dune because they want it to stay put.

Alan and my kids walking towards the path of the first powered flight from the site of the first glides the Wrights made.

This what what I got when I asked Griffin to pose.

Another fun thing I found in the yard, along with historic looking outbuildings.

They had bikes for us there! We used them to ride to dinner one night, to Garden Pizzeria.

The beach is still a good one.

Downtown Manteo was charming!

Then we went to The Lost Colony Play. We had a theme going.

I think they started with Native American singing and dancing last time. But the show had major updates that were fun to see: cool giant scale puppets and projections over the whole stage for effects.

This is the view of the dock belonging to our Airbnb looking across the intercoastal waterway.

We went to the Gateway Visitor Center for the many National Wildlife Refuges in the outer banks.

Bodie Lighthouse

Griffin climbing up inside the lighthouse. You have to plan ahead and make a reservation if you want to do this. I’m so glad we did this time!

View from the top of the lighthouse.

On our way back from the outer banks we decided to leave early in the morning and drive through Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, because I had written a paper about the reintroduction of the Red Wolf in that park when I was in graduate school. We hoped to maybe see a black bear or a red wolf. I saw both!!! And the bear decided to just amble towards our car right before he disappeared back into the forest. It was amazing!

We made dreams come true while we charged the car. Shakes from a milkshake making machine at Sheetz!

Then we did some furniture shopping at Furnitureland South. We are getting two of these chairs, but in a different fabric. I’m super excited! Also a new couch and bench/ottoman.

Our next adventure was to go back to Durham and stay in a hotel Priceline picked for us. We told the kids they must have consulted with Brett Keller personally to find us one this groovy. It was called Unscripted and they worked SO HARD to make it cool, and it worked! The lobby was totally lounge-like. The pool was a happening bar scene, and the decor was artsy and reminiscent of the 1960’s or 70’s. We got in on the party for a little while and tossed a beach ball around in the pool. Then we went to dinner where Alan and I had food at an amazing Puerto Rican/Soul food fusion place and Griffin and Eve had wonderful pizza from The Mellow Mushroom on the American Tobacco Campus, where there is ironically no smoking allowed. A Durham Bulls game was about to start so it was fun to watch people start to arrive for that, going to the stadium they built after we moved away from Durham.

Eve

As we were leaving our room in dress clothes…

A giant pool party with drinks and tunes was happening just outside.

We found our way to the Raleigh temple and did baptisms and confirmations.

The lobby

Our final day I decided may have been the best of all. We started the day with a swim first thing, had amazing vegan smoothie bowls and avocado toast, checked out, and went to Duke Lemur Center!  This is where the lemur who played Zaboomafoo was born, about the same time Mariah and Eliza were born. Martin Kratt went to Duke and volunteered at the Duke Lemur Center when he was a student. He also stops by when he is in town and a director talked about being a fan girl when he comes. We first toured the nocturnal house, where they had fat tailed dwarf lemurs, which are about the size of squirrels, dwarf mouse lemurs, which are about the size of chipmunks, and bush babies, a little larger than squirrels, which are not actually lemurs, but look a lot like them. They keep it dark and quiet during the day so we could see them being active and jumping and running around in their red-lit habitats. Then we saw the bigger, diurnal lemurs—crowned lemurs, sifaka lemurs (Zaboomafoo kinds), ring-tailed lemurs, ruffed lemurs and black blue-eyed lemurs. We heard a ring-tailed lemur crowing almost like a rooster! It was so cool! They have docents everywhere to answer your questions and very limited tours so we felt lucky to be there.

If you zoom in you’ll see Eve and Griff exiting with their souvenirs.

After that, I thought not much could top it, but we stopped at The Regulator Bookstore on Ninth St., which is the very cool, very liberal bookstore that I loved when we lived there. And we had Mediterranean food for lunch.  Our flight home featured a long layover where we treated ourselves to PF Changs for dinner in Atlanta. Eve and Griffin LOVED it! It was such a relief after a day of dietary dissapointment for them.