I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaack!

Well boys and girls we're back from the beach. We've gotten our fill of Atlantic Beach, North Carolina for another year, and since they can't very well move it, we may go back next year despite the loud and noisy protestations of the locals.

It was a damn fine week. We had hot sunny weather all week long with nary a rain drop in sight, well there was a stray cloud that put a drop or two on us but it was short lived and it ran away as soon as we shook our fists at it. The wind kicked up a day or two but it was nothing in comparison to what we've been through in years past. All in all we could not have asked for better weather.

Even though we started off an hour late due to the some people, and those people's initials would be the girlfriend's sister, sleeping in, we hit the road last Saturday morning.
Damn, look at that great pack job. I was proud of myself for getting all our stuff stuffed in the Scion with room to spare. The gf's parents Jeep Cherokee however had a decent pack job but it was nothing like mine.

We drove all day last Saturday with only a few stops and we got to the beach at around 5:30 PM.
After we unpacked he went for a walk on the beach. I saw this little girl surf fishing and she could not have been more than five or six and that rod she is using was about three times her size. She was cute as a button so I had to take her picture.
After our cheap ass made in China beach umbrellas bit the dust on Sunday we went to Wal Mart, I know I know "Mr. I hate Wal Mart with a passion and so should you" went to Wal Mart after telling you to boycott them for months. Well, I had to, I was out voted. Anyway we went and bought a beach canopy and it was the best damn sun protection, outside of sunscreen that we've ever used. (While we were in Wal Mart a female voice came over the intercom and said, "I need a male member of management to help a customer load something heavy. I repeat I need any male member..." Before she could finish I was laughing my ass off and my gf said, "Calm down, Mom and Dad are with us Mr. Smart Ass.")


The gf peeking out of the aforementioned canopy. Notice that she is wearing her bucket hat. Now, notice that this fat bastard, me, is not wearing his bucket hat that he bought specifically to wear at the beach. Notice also how I could stand to lose about 50 pounds. Yeah, yeah, one of you smart asses is saying that I could lose ten ugly pounds by chopping off my head, funny. Real funny. Leave the jokes to me. This is my blog after all. Just for that insolence, you get an extreme close up of me:Don't feed me or I'll follow you home. Notice how red my nose is. It got blistered over the next two days. From what you ask? Why fishing of course!


I lost my bucket hat in the first ten minutes of fishing off the pier. It was really windy and when I bent down to unhook my hook from under the pier, my first cast went horribly awry, my hat blew off into the ocean and it quickly floated off. Some damn dolphin is probably wearing it now.


I go fishing exactly once a year and that's when we go to the beach and if we went without her parents and sister I would not go fishing then but I actually do like it when I'm at the beach because we usually catch enough to cook and it's fun hanging out with the gf's Dad. He loves to fish but he won't go by himself since he's getting on up there in age so it's no skin off my nose to take him fishing a couple of times while we're on vacation.

Here's the gf's Dad with one of the many Blue Fish he caught and that we later filleted and cooked and ate.

Here's the biggest fish I caught. It looks small but it was about 13 and a half inches long and it weighed about 3 pounds. Unfortunately I had to toss it back because it was under the size limit. Had it been another inch long I would have filleted it and we would have ate it. That was the biggest fish I was to catch all week. The rest I caught we small fish that we used for cut bait.
However Sleepy, the gf's sister, stepped up and caught a shit load of Bluefish. And the ho even caught a flounder that we filleted.This one barely measured out and we cooked him later. She and her Dad caught a bunch more Flounders but they had to toss them back because they were under the size limit.This was from about half way through the first day's fishing. Later we turned them into this:

After soaking the Bluefish and the Flounder in Buttermilk the gf's Mom breaded them lightly and fried them. They were mmmm mmmm good.

We did a bit of sight seeing while there also. We saw Sand Henge.

And the famous pastel houses of Atlantic Beach.

Actually these houses are for rent and I checked into renting one of them. It turns out $5000 a week is a bit out of our price range. But the condo we stayed in was super nice anyway. It was spacious, clean, and tastefully decorated.

We saw some celebs at the beach. I know I was as shocked as you to see A Flock of Seagulls in North Carolina, but there they are. They hung out with us for a moment then they ran so far away.

The beach was kind of crowded on Sunday and Monday so I asked a bunch of people to write in the sand what their favorite blog was and they all wrote this:

Well there was one gal who started to write "Politits" but I told her that a shark was eating her kid so she ran off. And there was another chick who started to write "FranIam" but when I started to cry she quickly changed it to "Never What You Think It Should Be." I gave her five bucks to change it so she did and I took the picture above before she could change her mind.

I took a shit load of pictures so I'll be posting more soon and I'll also tell more vacation tales as well so stay tuned. I'm wiped out right now after driving all day and then grocery shopping and then cooking dinner tonight so I'm gonna leave you now with a spooky looking picture of the dunes and vegetation from behind the condo where we stayed.