One of our goals for this phase of the trip was to get up to North Carolina to see my uncle Dick and my cousin Cyndi. Both live near the ocean outside of Wilmington. After a couple days in the Red Roof Inn at Myrtle Beach (which was actually relatively comfortable), we were ready for a change of scenery. 

I did get to walk on the beach at Myrtle Beach (dogs are allowed before 10 am and after 5 pm between May 1 and Memorial Day, so Rebbe got to go too), but most of the time it was rainy due to Tropical Storm Ana. 

Friday was our driving day, and the weather held for us. We visited with Uncle Dick at his home, then headed to Southport to meet cousin Cyndi and her fiancé for dinner. We dined at Fishy Fishy. We chose it both for the food and the dog-friendly patio. I think my Dad made the best food choice with the halibut special, though I was at the opposite end of the table and didn’t get to taste it. I had the Fishy Fishy Taco, which is basically a grouper chimichanga. The mango salsa and grouper were great, but the deep-frying didn’t really do much for me. The service and atmosphere were great.



After dinner, we took a little walk (we’d driven around Southport before dinner) to check out the views.



The rest of the weekend was very relaxed. It rained almost the whole time, sometimes heavily, so we stayed inside, read, did laundry, talked, cooked, and ate. Sunday morning Maureen and I made Mother’s Day brunch of potato-crusted spinach quiche, turkey sausage, and cantaloupe. It was quite nice to be able to cook a couple of meals in a real kitchen–Thanks Cyndi!



Our other objective Sunday was to get a rental car so that we could return to Florida to get our car while Mom and Dad went home to Ohio with the minivan. Getting to the (small) Wilmington airport was easy, but the tropical storm weather kicked in on the way back. We were all happy just to be back at Cyndi’s after that.

Fortunately, I had sorted gear earlier in the day during a lull in the storm, so we just needed to load the rental car when the rain eased a bit. We headed out the next morning–more on that in the next post.