jockey's ridge

It's hard to believe that I took these photos just two years ago...so hard, in fact, that I keep double-checking my math...Late July 2009 was the last time I visited the Outer Banks, a place we vacationed for so many summers.  The exotic trips of late (Ireland, France, St. Thomas) have I guess pushed the yearly week-long stay in the OBX off the agenda...and even though the more recent trips have been new and exciting, I'm sort of missing the familiar, close-to-home (closer than the other places, at least) smell of salty air.
Tonight I felt like digging up the photos on my external hard drive (and boy was I shutter happy...so many un-named folders to sift through, sometimes several from just one day) and found my beach shots...thank goodness my photography has improved since then.  I always especially like the photos taken at Jockey's Ridge at sunset, even though having my camera with me prevents me from rolling around in the sand and doing stupid stuff...but taking photos is a lot of fun too.  This last trip, when I took these photos, I was playing around with my 70-300 zoom, positively amazed with the way I could fill the frame with a rich color, rather than having more sky (and more gradation) from my kit lens.  Of course, that zoom lens (f4-5.6) isn't fast so many of the shots were blurry, but I found a few tonight that I thought I'd like to play with in Lightroom (I especially like the first shot, which is a pretty severe crop out of a photo).  If nothing else, I want to go back to the Outer Banks to prove to myself that I can take much better photos now.
But...it's more than that.  I miss the familiar smell of the condo we rent(ed) almost every year, but when it wasn't a condo, it was a cottage on stilts with plenty of character.  Brightly colored (or fading, I don't mind either way) towels hanging over the greying bannisters, sand collected around the door, seashells laid out on the outdoor table, and boogie boards leaned up under the deck.  The weekly staples--a trip up to Corolla to drive down the beach and stake out a spot for the day to fish and play, a trip (or three) to Kitty Hawk Kites (before or after hiking the sand dunes at sundown), a round of miniature golf...ahh, nostalgia.  Ahh, summer.

PS: really sad this shot is blurry.  I bet I would have really liked it if it wasn't!