Ahh...Vacation.



(This is NOT us camping, just a random friendly family.)

 Vacation has changed.

At least, for me. Growing up, our vacations usually fell into two categories--driving to Florida to visit my grandfather, or camping in either Northern New Hampshire or Maine.

We'd drive to FL every three years or so, pulling out of the driveway at four in the morning in our pink conversion van, with a cooler full of sandwiches and snacks so that we wouldn't have to stop unless someone's bladder was going to explode, or my dad couldn't keep his eyes open any longer.  When that happened, we'd pull into a trucker rest stop and my dad would "rest". Of course, the four of us had been dozing and cooped up in the car for hours, so we'd be wide awake and bouncing around, which is not really conducive to sleeping.  Then my mom would hop into the driver seat and white-knuckle it for a few hours, until Dad couldn't handle her driving and more and bark for her to pull over.  I don't think there was ever a single hotel stop or fast food meal (unless we drove through McDonald's and my parents ordered half a dozen hamburgers).

This all sounds dramatic, but mostly I have fond memories of our drives. This was before portable DVD players and iPods and even CD players.  We always sat in the same seats. Me, the oldest, in the middle left seat.  Next to me was Keegan, the youngest and only boy.  In the way back were my sisters, 20 months apart and either fighting or plotting at any given moment, with a pile of blankets and toys around them.  They would take turns putting their bare feet up over the seat and rubbing them on Keegan's buzz cut, saying, "pedicure, pedicure" while giggling hysterically. There was a LOT of farting going on during those trips. One year, Meggie brought a little boom box and a Bryan Adams tape...I've never felt quite the same about Bryan Adams since. I loved being awake in the night and driving through DC or Baltimore and taking in all the lights, or watching the sunrise, and listening to my parents talk. Mom always brought along Twizzlers and Junior Mints (until she choked on a Junior Mint while driving one year!). 

We'd make it to Florida in about 24 hours, stay with my Grandpa Jim for five days, and then do it all again on our way back to NH. I did this once, in college, with a group of rugby players. It was just as fun, probably more, except of course I had to help drive. :)

Then, there was the camping.

My parents were essentially poor hippies when we were really little. So we camped. Sometimes, it was on a whim, like when we camped up in the White Mountains in October, and it snowed. (Less fun.)  But for several years, we went to the same campground for a week every summer--Lake Pemaquid Campground in Damariscotta, Maine.  It. Was. Awesome.  I have a plethora of cousins, and their families would usually join us. There were little playgrounds all over the place, and campground store, and a big rock out in the middle of the lake that we could swim to and climb all over. We are tent campers (not RV campers, or cabin campers, but I think that if you read about our trips to Florida, you'd probably already figured that out).  Folks would bring their guitars and  lots and lots of booze, and after a dinner of hotdogs and s'mores, we'd play Yahtzee by citronella-candlelight and then the kids were shuttled off to bed and the adults would play music and drink by the fire, while an occasional skunk ran around. 

It was a lot of fun--we were old enough to run around on our own as long as we stuck together.  On the weekends there would be dances, and I may even have had my first ever kiss up there!

So, that was my vacation experience growing up.

Little did I know...

In the meantime, while I was spending 24 quality hours in the car with my family, or sleeping on rocks and eating "raw" (aka cold) hotdogs and not bathing, my wife, Kat, was vacationing in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

I didn't even KNOW what the Outer Banks were six years ago, when I went on my first Thompson family vacation experience. We had driven down to Virginia to visit the in-laws for a week, and then caravaned from Richmond, VA to Avon, NC.  Driving with the Thompson clan is NOTHING like anything I'd ever experienced.  We'd drive for an hour, then ALL stop for breakfast/brunch. Then another hour, and it was a pee and snack break at McDonald's.  Then another pee break, then a stop for lunch, then a stop at the rest area at the top of the Banks. Then driving down the winding two-lane road nearly to the end, until we all stopped at the realtor's to pick up our keys. Then, finally, to the house.



Our 2011 beach house



THE HOUSE.

(If you recall, my vacations were spent in tents.)

My first Outer Banks house was three stories. It had (among other things) six bedrooms, six bathrooms, a pool table, two dishwashers, a pool, a hot tub, and an ELEVATOR. Our bathroom was big enough to keep the Pack n' Play in. We were a few hundred feet from the ocean (warm ocean with a sandy beach, very different from the ocean in Maine). 

It completely blew my mind.

While in the Outer Banks, we play at the pool in our backyard, or play in the ocean, or play in the sound. We visit the lighthouse and we go shopping. We eat a LOT of seafood (I'd never had crab legs before....AMAZING!) and we play a lot of board games. It's really the only time I drink coffee or alcohol. 

It's a whole different experience, and while I love it, some days I kind of miss the tent.

Kind of.