The night before we left for North Carolina my phone rang and I thought it was time to get up. I had set my alarm for 3:45am. Then I realized the ring was Mary at the Claridge door wanting in. My watch said it was only 9:15pm. I quickly dressed in my robe and went down. Then back to bed and sleep. My alarm on my phone did go off at 3:45am. Mary was already up.
Kristen picked us up at 4:30am to drive us to the airport. On the way she had to take a side road due to an accident on road and construction.
All went according to plan until our plane tried to leave the Detroit Airport. The airplane entry door had been shut too soon and had scrunched some mechanism that indicated what the air in the airplane was going to be like on the way to Norfolk. The passengers sat for some time on the plane – and then were asked to depart the plane out the back door to go down the tall flight of steps. Most people had never even seen the long flight of steps leaving the plane. Those have been used on a great number of international flights so we were used to them. In the mean-while they worked to fix that door. We were in the Detroit airport for quite some time…certainly long enough to eat a bowl of soup.
Finally…after about a five-hour span of time we reboarded. We had the same crew, and same kind of airplane, but a different plane. I assume they had moved all our luggage that had been loaded onto the original plane.
We finally arrived at Norfolk but had to sit on the runway because there was no one to guide us into our gate for about fifteen or twenty minutes. Then, of course it took us forever to line up our rental car. However, we did finally drive out of the airport and head south. Of course by then it was dark…not early afternoon as it was scheduled to be.
About the time that we approached Nags Head we started talking about needing to stop at a Hen House to buy a bit of groceries…something for breakfast, but also something for that night when we arrived at Blue Heaven. We managed to do all of that and then head for Avon.
We did have to laugh…we had never spent that long getting to our house on the beach. We were picked up at 4:30am and arrived at Blue Heaven about 10:30pm. I did feel a bit like crying, but frankly the only real alternative was to laugh at the craziness of the whole day.
There was some rain driving down, but also some light rain the next day. Mary suggested that we drive to Manteo since going to the beach seemed impossible. So off we went. We stopped at Pea Island Nature Reserve and of course shopped a bit. We also stopped at the drug store on the way into Manteo. One beach hat was not going to be enough. We bought another umbrella and another beach hat…and then took off for the Manteo Furniture Store.
We struggled to pick out a coffee table for the first floor plus also a cabinet where the bookcase was on the second floor. They should be delivered today which will be fun. Mary is working hard also at painting the first-floor bathroom white. It will look fantastic, but I hate to have her working so hard. I just need to learn to keep my mouth shut.
We are only here for one week, so I am going to push that one of the next two days is spent driving to the beach. For some reason that is very different than just walking down to our beach. Mary has three more chairs to paint white also…we’ll see how much actually gets done.
We placed some of Rodney’s ashes in our yard there. I expect that some of mine will go there also.
Life is still good…even though I am ninety years old. Amazing at that.
