Beach Week with Friends in Oak Island, North Carolina

Every year my friends that I swam with try to meet up and this year was no exception. Unfortunately, with all of us living in different states and having busy lives (though I’m pretty easy nowadays) it’s been difficult this year. Our friend Jen couldn’t make it because she was using all her vacation time for a road trip in July and Andrew couldn’t make it because he was swimming 120 miles of the Hudson River in 7 days. As an aside, congrats to Andrew for being the only finisher this year and for just being awesome. On top of Jen and Andrew not being able to make it, we could also steal Rachel for a long weekend. Still, we did our best and soldiered on, making the absolute most of our time at the beach. We swam morning and afternoon (and some nights), read on the beach, we ate a ridiculous quantity of guacamole and fruit salad (not necessarily at the same time), played board games in the evening, and continued our tradition of watching bad movies and British comedy. In short, pretty much the same things we’ve been doing since 1996.

Having a week at the beach not to mention a mattress to sleep on was wonderfully relaxing, but more importantly, it was just really great to spend time with some of my oldest friends. I have been so fortunate this past year for many reasons, but one of the biggest things I am thankful for is that I’ve been able to spend time with some of my friends who lived nowhere near where I used to live in Rhode Island. As I’m writing this post at the end of July I’ve been visiting different friends for six weeks straight now from North Carolina to Connecticut and I am beyond thankful to have each and every one of these people in my lives. Thinking back on our week at Oak Island, my travels with Carrie and Rachel earlier during my journey, and my visit to Chrissy’s in El Paso, I am particularly thankful to have friends like these with whom I have so much shared history and who make me feel at home wherever we meet.

So, on to the pictures. We had so much fun at the beach that my camera broke on day 2 but I do have some pictures from the first couple days. I would now like to present us in our natural element:

Oak Island is also a lovely place with perfect water temperature and uncrowded sands. A few shots of the beach below: