Lake Phelps

Over the 4th we traveled to John's Uncle's Lake House. It was about 5 hours from us toward the outer banks of NC. John and I had visited Uncle Paul and Aunt Susan there before - but it was the first time our children had been. It was an awesome weekend: perfect weather, delicious southern food (homemade biscuits every morning and the world's best pimento cheese), and relaxed family fun. Here is some of the fun we caught on film...

Ready for a fun day.

You can almost see it in the picture - but the bottom of Lake Phelps is sandy and the water is crystal clear. I grew up going to NC lakes and I have never seen any water as clear, clean or beautiful as this lake water.

The area is extremely rural... especially for this city girl!

We drove around one night looking for wild bears. Yeah, you can guess that was not my idea. Caroline (John's cousin) saw 16 wild bears the night before on the wildlife preserve. All we saw was birds and beautiful landscape.

The sunset on our bear hunt...

One of Ethan's favorite parts was riding in all the boats with his dad. Here they are in the kayak.

Lake Phelps is NC's second largest natural lake. One of the coolest things about the almost perfectly round lake - even in the very middle it is never deeper than 7 or 8 feet. The kids could walk VERY far out and still touch. They LOVED that. That adult you see is John standing about 30 feet from the dock.

This was taken on July 4th. As you can see- not boat in sight. Most of the lake is surrounded by Pettigrew State Park and can never be developed. There are only a handful of houses on the lake- and even on the most popular weekend of summer there were barely any boats out.

We were fortunate to have John's mom come with us (it is her brother's lake house). She is a huge help with the kids.

Pulling Isaac and Liv on the tube.

Off for a pedal boat ride. They LOVED this boat. Even more than the motor boat - but then again- John did all the work pedalling.

Thanks to Paul and Susan for an awesome weekend!