Sand dune doom

Sand Dune Doom

This past summer, my whole family and I took a trip to the Outer Banks, which is the island off the cost of North Carolina. We rented a beach house on Salvo, which is the ninth town down from the entrance to the island. We rented the house for the whole last week of June, and every day of it was sunny and warm. The last night we were there, the girls (my mom and I, along with my aunt and two girl cousins) went out to dinner in a town further up known as Kitty Hawk, which is the fourth town down from the entrance, and about 40 minutes away from Salvo. In Kitty Hawk, there is a place called Jockey Ridge, which is a beautiful park of all naturally occurring sand dunes. People climb the sand dunes all day, and in the evening they fly their kites from the top of them.

After our dinner, we went to visit the sand dunes at Jockey Ridge. We were flying our kites from the top with everyone else, and watching the beautiful sun set below us. When we decided to leave, we walked over to the side of the biggest and steepest sand dune we saw. There were kids riding their sand boards down the side of it and trying to run back up. My oldest cousin Sam and I decided we were going to run down the side of the sand dune, like some other kids were doing. (Side note: I run cross country, and we are trained to run a special way on some types of ground. Steep, un-solid ground (in this case, wet sand) you are supposed to run putting most pressure on your heels so you don’t tumble forward. My cousin does not run cross country, therefore does not know this)

So we handed off our kites to our mothers and off we went. I was in first place the whole way down the hill, until about twenty feet from the bottom when I noticed my cousin fly by me. She was running too fast and her stride was way too long- then she toppled down the rest of the hill, face first, into the sand at the bottom. When she came to her senses a few minutes later, she finally stood up and started walking with me. She was covered head to toe in sand. There was sand covering every inch of her body, there was sand in her hair and in her clothes. She blew her nose and there was sand in there, she had a full mouth of sand and sand in her ears.

What I learned from this vacation is that humor, even in the most twisted forms, can arrive randomly and any point in time. I’ve learned that family is the greatest thing to share that humor with, because I know that she is never going to live that down. Last but not least, I’ve learned that next time we run down sand dunes together, Sam will be wearing a full body protection suit.