whistling dixie.

adam and i took our annual memorial day vacation road trip to virginia beach to visit my father.  an added bonus was the fact that my brother, future sister-in-law and nephew made the trip too.  

adam and i have the comfortable car ride silence down to a science.  no awkwardness, just relaxing. audio books are essential and we completed two on this journey; Darkfall by Dean Koontz and In the Dark of Night by John Saul.  the latter was the better of the two.  Darkfall gave away too much in the beginning and i didn't dig the whole voodoo thing.
for road side food shacks and other regional curiosities, we stopped at the machipongo clam shack.  being vegetarian, i don't eat seafood but adam has none of my dietary restrictions.  none the less, i can certainly appreciate a local beer and some french fries!

different from previous years, we got a hotel room right on the beach.  listening to the ocean every night was incredibly relaxing and waking up to awesome sunrises didn't hurt either.

we caught some live music.  the hotel bar hosted nature's child, a five piece live reggae band the first night.  on our final night, adam and i met up with my father to see the yardbirds in the outdoor neptune park right next door to our hotel.  while they only have two of their original band members, it was still a good show.

time flies, especially when you're on vacation but getting back to our furry children was motivation to come home.  thinking of how excited the dog and cats would be was enough to power us through those draining new jersey miles.  a trip to ikea helped too.
i can't tell a lie...the view from our bedroom window pales in comparison to this: