Kure Beach

As it is that time of year that so many people are packing up and heading to the beach for a week's vacation, or more, I find myself thinking a lot about our family beach trips when I was growing up.  They were always such great times and, over the years, we went to so many different NC beaches.  There was lots of planning involved in these trips.  Mom and Grandmother would spend weeks planning our meals.  We usually went out for seafood at least once during the trip, otherwise everything was cooked at the beach house.  And the packing.  That was always intense.  Dad could pack more stuff into a vehicle than I ever thought possible.  Suitcases, coolers of food, fishing gear, etc.  It was all there and nothing was to be missed. 

Kure Beach, NC was the first beach we went to during my life.  That was always such a wonderful place back in the day.  Someone in Monroe owned the house that we rented and I remember driving with Mom to pick up the keys for the house.  I don't remember where we went exactly, but I remember going with her haha!  And as I was not yet in school, I got to go with Mom to Food Lion (or it may still have been Food Town in those years) to buy all of our food for the trip.  Getting the flats of Chek Sodas was my favorite because it was one of the few times of year we got to really drink soda!

The house we stayed in was old.  There were no closets in the house and each bedroom had a wardrobe in it.  The light fixtures hung from the ceiling were turned on by pulling a cord.  The house had 2 screened porches.  One in front and one in back.  Each porch had a swing on it.  I spent many afternoons with Grandmother on those porches swinging and singing.  It was so glorious.  The downstairs/street level of the house had 2 bedrooms.  One was green, the other red.  When family went with us, they usually stayed in those guest quarters.  I remember that the red bedroom had a high bed in it and there was a small step stool you could use to climb into bed. 

Family was always with us at that beach house.  Sometimes Aunt Sara and Aunt Mary Lee came with us.  Sometimes cousin Isabel came.  And Uncle Bill and Aunt Jan, who lived in Wilmington, always came with our cousins for a visit.  One year, it rained all week.  My brother and I, both very young, were apparently climbing the walls so Mom and Dad went shopping and bought us our first set of Legos.  As the story has been told to us, that kept us occupied for the rest of the week to the relief of our parents.  This was also the beach where I got my first fishing pole.  Mom and Dad loved to surf fish and, when he visited, Uncle Bill always joined them.  They would catch the fish and Dad would clean it and Mom would fry it up for dinner. They got me a little yellow fishing rod that had 2 fishing lines on it.  On my first time fishing, I could 2 flounder at the same time.  Somewhere there are pictures to prove that!

I never realized how much truly went into these trips and am so grateful now for having had that experience.  The house, which was ocean front, is long gone as are mostly all of those houses from yesteryear.  Kure Beach is built up and looks so different from those times.  But, oh, how I long to revisit that time just once more.  Just being with family and friends in a relaxing spot away from all reality for a time.  I'm not sure the house even had a television in it.  If it did, we didn't watch much of it!  Maybe it's time to start planning a beach trip of my own, not to relive those times necessarily but to create new memories that are just as special!