Vacation - Day 12 - Pirate Treasure

Tuesday was my favorite day of the whole vacation. The kids really wanted to take a day to drive to Ocracoke and dig for Blackbeard's treasure. We wanted to make this day really fun for them, so Erik and I worked on a pretty elaborate plan to pull it off.

We stopped at Dirty Dick's on the drive down for lunch. They have GREAT seafood and the hush puppies are soooooo good. Our next stop was Cape Hatteras, where Lisey & Marc finished their junior ranger activitie and were sworn in by the NPS rangers. We continued from there to the end of the island, where we caught the ferry to Ocracoke.

When we got to Ocracoke Island, we drove until we found a good potential buried treasure place. I distracted the kids by looking at the wild ponies while Erik quickly finished drawing the treasure map we had started working on before we left.

We then stopped at the Blackbeard Museum. While I took the kids to look for toy swords and pirate bandanas, Erik gave the map the clerk. Earlier when the kids had said we should try to find a map, I had suggested to Marc that maybe they'd have one at the Blackbeard Museum. So, of course, he asked the clerk.

The clerk was a great sport and whispered to him that she DID have one, but she'd been told to ONLY give it to a child who loved pirates. Since Marc was wearing a pirate shirt, she decided he was the one. She gave him the map, and the kids looked it over for awhile. Marc recognized the ponies on the map and knew exactly where we needed to go.

We drove back to the spot and while I distracted the kids again looking for more ponies, Erik buried our treasure. (Before we left on vacation, I'd taken an old looking basket and filled it with jewelry, coins, stones, and anything else that looked treasure-esque.) When Erik came back to tell us the coast was clear, the kids followed the map until they found the 'X' - two crossed sticks on the beach.

Marc and I dug until we hit the basket. The kids were SO excited. They didn't want to open it on the beach because somebody might see the treasure and try to steal it. So we took it back to the van and opened it there. They were amazed at all the stuff inside.

It was getting to be dinnertime, so we stopped for food at Howard's Pub (again, wonderful seafood and great hush puppies!) then caught the ferry back to Hatteras. When we got home, the kids opened the basket and spent hours going through the treasure, oooohing and aaaaahing.