The wind is not that bad!!!!!

Friday was a stay @ home , so to speak, day. When we woke-up on Saturday the wind was whipping around, TS Hannah was making land fall about 25 miles south of VA Beach. The max speed was 60 mph. VA Beach was getting sustained winds of about 20mph and gust up to 50mps. Squalls of rain every hour or so with sun intermittently. WE stayed inside for a few hours watching the news waiting for any updates, basically the news said it was raining and quite a few cities had power outages. Not VA Beach. So intrigued with the TS B wanted to go out. He wanted to see the beach. By this time surfers were coming from all over to catch the big waves and B was ready to go see the affects of the weather on the beach. He wanted to see if our sand castle was still their from the night before.

Now as fore mentioned I am from FL and have experienced a few TS and Hurricanes. Mind you not directly on the beach, but close enough. We had purchased rain ponchos in the event of.....rain. We bundled B up in an adult size poncho tied at the bottom. and walked down the sidewalk to see the TS on the beach.

Well! First off it is amazing how 10 and 15 story hotels block and shield you from the strong wind. We stepped out on the boardwalk and first, almost lost B. The wind pushed him back. Next, oh wait I forgot to tell you Shawn and I had shorts on, However did wear one of the ponchos we purchased. As we stepped out of the cozy shelter of the hotels the wind seemed much stronger then 20mphs and on several occasions we did experience a few of those wind gust of 50mph.

Immediately my tender legged little boy began to say OUCH.....short of being hit with a full strenght fire hose from about 5 feet we quickly realized every piece of individual sand from VA Beach was now being embedded in our skin.....As quickly as I could I took off my poncho(mothers are such heros) and rapped any unwrapped body parts of my son in the green plastic wrap. Once the pain stopped B wanted to go closer to the water. He wanted to see if the castle was still their. So doing what good fathers do, Shawn picked him up and carried him(fighting wind and sand) to the shore line.

Amazingly enough the sand castle did still remain, in a much smaller form .A two foot cliff had also formed. What a great lesson in erosion. Cool, education on our autograph stalking trip. Although B was fascinated we quickly all opted to head back for the safety of our hotel.

We had spent an entire day on Friday relaxing and not doing much of anything I was not going to let that happen today. Once we returned from the beach we showered and got dressed. The weather report said the TS had made land fall and moved more central then up the coast. The winds were not as strong as expected and flooding and power outages seemed to be limited to the cental and northern parts of VA.
Our next mission was going to take us south so why not pile in the car and drive on roads we have never driven on in the middle of TS.

We loaded into the car and a way we went on the hunt for Kill Devil Hill. For those of you who may not know what or why we would look for this place I will tell you. Along with Nascar my son also likes Monster Trucks. Whats not to like Giant trucks on Giant tires with Giant engines which propell them into the air over Giant obsticals.(school buses, dirt piles, cars) B's favorite truck has always been Grave Digger. We have almost as many monster truck toys as we do Nascar toys. Last Xmas we purchased an actual(smaller of course)battery operated replica of the Grave Digger in which B drives all around the yard. Kill Devil Hill is the birth place and current home of the Monster Truck, Garage, Gift shop and home of the driver. We were headed to find Grave Digger.

Our next