While at the Welcome Center, we learned about Fort Macon just past Atlantic Beach.  We decided to head there first. Very cool place. It kinda resembled Castillo de Santiago in Puerto Rico (link). After exploring the fort, we walked over the beach directly behind it.  Man, that wind was something awful.  Probably 50+ gusts. We decided to drive down to the Atlantic Beach area hoping it may be shielded from the wind .

At Atlantic Beach, Tessa and I tried to put our beach tent up and it was trying to be a kite.  Everyone on the balcony of the bar got a good laugh at our attempts. We finally gave up on the tent.  The wind was still pretty bad, but it was much better so we spent most of the day there.  

After spending most of the day at the beach, we drove down to Surf City to meet up with some of our friends  from Cincy (Tim & Michele) who recently built a house in the area.  We had a nice dinner at the Shuckin Shack right near Surf City.  After dinner we drove by their new house and then headed back to the hotel and arrived around 9p.  Very full day.