Change is constant at OBX

SWAC Daughter searches for shells in front of beach house at OBX.

May 2010.

With a good many friends vacationing this week at the Outer Banks of North Carolina, today's article by Andy Thompson in the Richmond Times-Dispatch caught my eye ... and the eye of my parents who emailed to be sure I had seen it. Andy talks about going to OBX for 25 years ... well, I can top him because my family started vacationing there in the 1960s.

Both of us have seen many changes over the years and, thus, today's article:

Time is the one currency in which we all trade. We spend it for memories, and if we spend wisely, those memories become more valuable with the years, compounding upon the recounting.

My parents brought me and my sister to the Outer Banks for the first time more than 25 years ago. My first vacation memories, first memories of the beach, the ocean, sand castles and fly ing a kite all come from those early trips.

We went to Corolla, the Outer Banks' northern terminus (in terms of pavement), when there were just two roads: U.S. Route 12 into the area and the dirt road behind the first row of dunes. Only a handful of houses were scattered along it.

I've written previously about my childhood on the beaches of NC and, like Andy, we took my now-grown children there to make memories of their own.

I still haven't posted leftover photos of the trip in May when we stayed at Waves. Maybe one slow day I'll get to it...

OBX. A jewel along the eastern coast.