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Upon arriving in Rodanthe to spend, yes, Nights in Rodanthe, I was madly in love and carting a Nikon D90 around with me. As a result, I shot romantic sunsets and pristine beaches and I did it all last minute, literally as we were packing the car to leave. That equals fail on my part, I realize.

I climbed over this pile of rubble to get to the pier in the previous picture. It was worth it.

We camped across the way from this site, which faces inland and the state of North Carolina, but on the opposite side, where we meandered onto a beautiful surf laden beach, the waters betrayed their rough Atlantic nature by being ball shrinkingly cold, and battering the beach with waves one would be amiss to refuse boogie boarding. I bought a boogie board for the kids to do so. I was too shy to boogie board in front of my male companion. Call me lame, I know.

Those beaches, despite their gorgeous waves and a temperature that my companion seriously couldn’t handle (wuss), were at their true best after the sun had set. We went walking along the beach, meeting up with happily camp fired up fellow campers who took their blazing bonfires to the beach when the campsite fascists golf carted their way to naysaying at every stop. We set off some ‘sparklers’ (that go kaboom in the sky) and found an army of children skittering by us with drunken swearing adult supervision.

Their efforts required shovels, buckets, and apparently a lot of screaming. I quickly became intrigued, as did my own child. We drew close enough to watch one of the adults nearly drop his beer in a tirade after something he’d reached for on the sand apparently bit him. Then I spotted the creature – darting sideways along the dunes. It was a crab, and it’s pincers were displayed in warning to the oncoming horde of unsupervised children. I sensed his fear, but more importantly, I sensed his fury, and it made me want to grab a bucket and shovel and go chasing the bastards in the dark myself.

The creatures would freeze in the light of a flashlight – failing on their part #1. Haven’t several decades of Deer taught anyone a lesson?

My eyes grew unfocused and quick, darting across the dark sand as we walked down the beach. I spotted several, now that I knew I should be looking, and the excitement of knowing they were underfoot made me giddy. I began to chase them myself, as riveted as the children in my wake. I could have spent the entire evening chasing those damn things if it weren’t for that buzzkill of a crab who decided to run, full tilt at my daughter in his attempts to get away from us. She of course, careened down the beach shrieking, heading straight for a bonfire, and then proceeded to need to be carried the rest of the time we were on the beach.

Clearly, it was time to head back to the campsite. My daughter remained deathly afraid of crabs for months afterward. Thanks, crabsshole.

This pier was the foreboding obilisk I felt necessary to scale in order to get a proper shot of the sunset as we were leaving the Outer Banks. You can clearly see that it had the words “Climb Me Barefoot” painted on it by some concerned beach goer eons before. My then honey wrangled the children while I went off irresponsibly and did the photographer thing – you know, nearly step on rusty nails in barefeet in order to get the shot. Yeah, that’s me.

We piled the kids and the properly folded tent into my van and headed home, more than a little disappointed to be leaving the location, but not in the slightest upset to leave that sleeping bag on the rocky tent floor. My back still hasn’t fully recovered.

Still, a rocky tent floor didn’t stop me from feeling the need to shoot romantic photographs, now did it?

Nope. Clearly not.

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