A couple of weeks ago, the snowstorms and negative temperatures were really getting me down. It didn’t help that Michael was in Hawaii for work (I know, rough, right?) and I was stuck shoveling our driveway every other day all by my lonesome. So I did what I do every winter and began looking toward warmer weather for somewhere that would give me a break from all of the shoveling. I wasn’t long into my search when I had an idea – we’d hop in the car once Michael returned from Hawaii, and finally take Orvis down to Bald Head Island. We had put this adventure on our ’30 by 30′ list when we first moved to Maine nearly seven years ago, but every year, we seemed to be pulled in a million different directions when we visited North Carolina for holidays or weddings, leaving us zero time or energy to tack on the miles and days for a trip to Bald Head.

I grew up visiting this truly extraordinary island off the coast of North Carolina with my family multiple times a year and when Michael came into the picture in college, our trips became even more memorable. The only downside of the timeshare my parents owned was that the home didn’t allow dogs, so Orvis was never able to accompany us on these weekends away. Taking him to a place that we both hold so dear was incredibly important to us, but I always secretly wondered if we’d just never get around to doing so.

It took us all of five minutes on the beach our first night on the island this past week to realize that we should have been doing this each year of the past seven! Watching him run the length of the empty beaches we used to visit when we were younger brought us an unbelievable amount of joy.

We’ll be sharing lots more about what makes Bald Head so unique and special to us, but we couldn’t resist leading with a few photos of what might be our most memorable experience from our 30 by 30 list so far… besides getting married, of course!

All photos taken by Meredith Perdue for Map & Menu.