Good Morning

Zelda ends up sleeping in our bed between us. I think being in strange places in a strange bed is making it hard for her to sleep well. Plus, the mattress of the pack n' play that Best Western provided us sucks. We head down to the first floor for breakfast after getting ready for the day. Between the three of us, we have mini waffles, sausage, and eggs.

Wilmington

Jeremiah looks up places for us to go get coffee and picks Maroon Monkey. It's down by the waterfront, which is conveniently where I want to go. It's a short drive from the hotel, and we easily find a lot to park in. We walk into the coffee shop and there are very few ables, thus nowhere for us to sit. Jeremy orders an iced s'mores latte, and I get a hot banana fosters latte. We sit on a little bench by the door as we wait for them to make our beverages. The place has a cool brick wall with a mural of their logo on it. There are wicker style lanterns hanging from the ceiling. Our coffees are just okay.

Next door is an indoor market area which includes art, books, clothing, spices, and wooden pieces. There are a bunch of these "DCUK" figures. No, that's not misspelled. Some of the ducks are plain, and others have rain jackets, boots, bicycling outfits on, and more. They all have name tags, too! We love them, but choose to come back and buy one on the way back to the car so we aren't carrying it around. We'll be back little duckies!

We go outside and are slapped with the heat and the humidity. We walk a few blocks down to the waterfront area and we are dismayed to find that it's just some barstools on a wooden deck next to the river. Across the street is a huge building - the Alton Lennon Federal Building. There's a water fountain in its courtyard. We head up, dipping our hands in the water to try to cool off, and let Zelda splash her hands a bit and play with the water from outside the fountain. If she stands on her tippy toes, she can reach the water by herself.

In and out of shops we go in 101ºF weather (38.3ºC). We buy a few things from a place called The Black Cat Shoppe including three tiny Pokéballs that Zelda picks out, and a giant water bottle for me. We go into Edge of Urge where we pick out a Rainbow Fish bath book for the 11 month old. We stop in several more stores without buying anything, and finally head back to the ducks. We let Zelda pick a duck, and she selects one with pink rain boots named Daisy.

We get back in the car and head back to the hotel to cool off, let Zelda take her afternoon nap, and get ready for our next adventure.

Carolina Beach

A few hours of nap-time later, we depart from the hotel to go to Carolina Beach. It starts to pour rain on the way which makes us worry a bit if the beach will be a good experience or not. We park in the Hamlet Lot and it is still raining.

"Let's go get lunch and hopefully it will stop raining soon," my ever optimistic husband suggests. I agree and we walk towards the main road and find a pizza place called Michelangelos. Jeremy loves the fact that it shares a name with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and it's a pizza place. He gets a personal pizza with olives, mushrooms, and bacon. I get a pepperoni calzone. We share bites with our daughter. Jeremy's hopes end up being fruitful, and the rain stops. The rain also cooled off the weather, thank goodness.

We walk to the beach, and it's not nearly as packed as we thought it would be. Maybe the rain helped us out in more ways than one! In fact, it's not packed at all where we are, and we pick a nice spot not too far but not too close to the water's edge. Jeremy tells me to "go dunk yourself", so I splash into the water and swim for a bit in the ocean. The ocean is the perfect temperature. I return to shore, and Jeremy goes to the water with Zelda. I grab my camera and take photos of her and her first time in the ocean. She isn't quite sure how to feel about it. She thinks it's hilarious that the water comes up and laps her feet and then retreats, but she doesn't want it to lap her too much. That's fair. She's small.

Zelda and I return to our spot on the sand as Jeremy takes a dip. He returns, and they play in the sand for a while with our 50 cent bucket we found at a thrift store the day prior. She soon crawls into my arms and falls asleep. Jeremy takes the opportunity to use the bucket to build a sand fortress wall around Zelda and I. Everyone who walks by thinks it's great. The tide starts to rise after an hour or so, and a small group of people gathers around Jeremy's sand fortress, which now has a moat in front of it, to see how long it takes for the fortress to go down. Turns out, Jeremy is a great architect of sand, and his moat never fails to save the wall. We admire the sunset, safe from the tide behind Jeremy's creation, it still in tact when we leave.

We rinse off in these showers off of the beach near the lot we parked in, get in the car, and head back to our hotel. We don't feel like going out somewhere, especially since Zelda is still a sleepy girl, so we just order iHop. It was such a lovely way to end our trip to North Carolina. We will be flying home tomorrow.