Jennette's Pier (Nags Head, NC)

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I mentioned on Monday that we spent a few days with friends in Nags Head this past weekend, and while we were there, we managed to find the most kid-friendly beach spot in all of the Outer Banks. It's Jennette's Pier: bathrooms and showers nearby, shady underneath, refreshments and entertainment above. We spent something like eight (!) hours at the beach one day with a seven-month-old and three-year-old in tow and nobody got sunburned or even had a tantrum.

Jennette's Pier isn't exactly a hidden secret -- the pier has been around since the 1930s, and was totally renovated and reopened in 2011 after almost being destroyed by Hurricane Isabel when she swept through in the early 2000s. The new pier is state of the art: all-concrete, a thousand feet long, and powered partly by solar energy and the wind turbines that circle overhead (it took a while to get used to the sound of the turbines going around when we were up top but after a little while we didn't notice them at all.)

Besides a gift shop and fishing on the back half of the pier, there's a small aquarium up front that Anouk loved watching every time we came up to visit the bathrooms. And there was plenty of other wildlife to see -- while we were fishing we spotted a sea turtle and a small dogfish shark (that James caught -- a little upsetting to actually realize they do live in the same ocean near where we swim). When it was time to eat, we just walked across the street to one of the great little cafes there (the maui sandwich at Sam and Omie's came highly recommended).

By the time we went home we were soggy, sandy, and tired but happy, too.