Everything Happens For A Reason

Most people who go to the beach every year go to get away from their normal lives and spend time with their loved ones. For the past eighteen years, I have been going to the Outer Banks with my close family friends. Each year my family and the Kellys would pick a family to go with us that year. The Kellys have been friends with my parents for about 25 years, we are so close to them that we even call them Uncle Chris and Aunt Jo. They have three kids Sarah being the oldest, then Patrick and CK. So one year we picked my good old friend Conor and his family, the Ryans that were him and his older sister Brooke, to go with us. Ever since then, they have come with us on many fun trips. Every once in a while though, I go there with my actual family for Thanksgiving. Both of my parents’ sides of the family get a nice house and spend the week there with each other. It’s obviously not as warm as the summer, but it is still a fun time nonetheless. The Ryans and the Kellys always come to my house before we leave to go to the Outer Banks. They stay the night and then the next day we all drive off in a convoy to the house.

In 2017, we are all at my house talking about how excited we were for this year’s trip. When all of a sudden we got an alert from the realtor of the house that some power is out in the Outer Banks. Some of us, mainly the moms, were starting to freak out and think the worst, but the rest of us were optimistic and thinking that they would figure out the power outage situation by the time we got down there. It usually takes us two days to get down there. We always stop at this hotel in Elizabeth City where one of the best Mexican restaurants you will ever have right next to it, it's called Three Amigos.

The next morning we pack everything up in the cars, making sure we have everything we need for the trip, and the convoy begins. It takes us about five and a half hours to get to the hotel. Once we get there, we get settled and showered up for Three Amigos. Like usual, we have to wait to get seated because a group of forteen people usually can’t get a table right away. When we get our table we all sit down and order our drinks. As soon as they come back, we get an email from the realtor. It says the power is out in all of the southern Outer Banks and we cannot go to the house for our vacation. Everyone is speechless, the moms start to cry and everyone is looking at each other thinking, now what. We obviously eat at Three Amigos and then go back to the hotel where we decide what we are going to do. Are we going to just call it and go home or find an alternative vacation?

When everything was pointing towards us going home, my dad made an historic clutch find. He found a house in Myrtle Beach, affordable for all three families, so without hesitation we got it. The next day we drive an extra six or seven hours to South Carolina. The house looks immaculate from the outside, the beach is barely a block away, no complaints so far. We go inside and the moms tell us where everyone is sleeping. Me and my brother get paired and sent into a room, two twin beds, a tv, and its own bathroom, still no complaints. We order food that night and get stuffed to the gills. Everyone is thinking this won’t be a bad trip, we will make the most of it. It wasn’t until I got into bed, the beds were filled with sand and hard as a rock. I look to my brother and say, “Hey Ryan, is it just me or does it feel like you are sleeping on the beach right now.”

He turns to me and says, “Bro, I thought it was just me, I didn’t know if it was just in my head or not!”

The next morning, no one really had good sleep, we all put our bed sheets and everything in the laundry to have them cleaned for the next night. The moms are already saying this trip sucks and it’s the worst, the dads are trying to tell them to give it a chance and wait for the beach. We got to the beach and oh my god, was it crowded. At the Outer Banks, the beaches aren’t crowded at all, there we almost have our own beach, it is the nicest thing ever. To this day I still do not know how we got a spot and we managed to get a spot where we can all fit. Except for all the people on the beach, the day was fun, the water was great, good for boogie boarding and body surfing. When people started to leave the beach, spots around us opened up so we were able to play some Spikeball and cornhole which is always fun and competitive with our group.

Nothing much happened for the first few days, until we went go karting and a water park obstacle course. Go karting was just awesome, competitive racing from the first race to the very end. It was always neck and neck between two of us the whole race. The water park had to be the best part of the trip. All of us were slipping and falling because the obstacles were so difficult to stand on. My dad definitely had the worst fall, it was not even a minute onto the obstacles, he takes two steps and just falls right on his back. It was like the Charlie Brown football scene, the only thing we were missing was a football.

The worst part of the trip, like any other vacation, was the journey home. Going home this time was definitely the worst because we had to drive twelve hours to get back to Delaware, and of course we drive through Washington DC when it is rush hour. The lesson I got from this whole trip was everything happens for a reason. I had some of the best times of my life on that trip and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I still tell the moms I would go back to Myrtle Beach, but they get mad everytime I bring that up.