Years of Family Vacations with Carolina Designs Realty
For some people, planning a family reunion on the Outer Banks is a months-long, or maybe even a year-long project. There’s finding a time that works for everyone; coordinating schedules with dozens of people; finding a house that everyone can agree on; and meticulous scheduling of events and time together.
Or there’s the Dee Tuzzo method.
“We have cousins and aunts and uncles. We’ve had grandparents that come and stay,” She said. “We just throw it out there. This is the time we’re going. Whoever wants in has to commit, and then we find a house after that.”
How many are able to make the trip varies widely, Dee mentioned. “We’ve gone down with as few as five or six of us, and up to like 26 or 27.” And the result is always the same. “It’s fun.” For the past ten years of working with Carolina Designs to find a house, it’s worked well.
“It’s just easy to have a relationship with them. They are just so kind, so respectful. If we ever do have an issue, they jump right on it. We’ve never been disappointed,” Dee said. She and her husband live in Massachusetts not far from Cape Cod, although she admits “we don’t go to the Cape at all.”
The vacation is all about family. Most of the family lives close by, and to make the trip, “We kind of usually caravan…We’ve got sometimes six cars. Sometimes, again, there’s only a handful of us.”
A typical trip to the Outer Banks begins around midnight with plans to cross the Wright Memorial Bridge into Kitty Hawk and the Outer Banks at about 11:00 in the morning. There is, Dee said, something that happens “when you cross that bridge. There’s just this sigh of relief that you’re back and that you’re here. I don’t know what it is. It’s just a draw.”
The Tuzzos always visit in the shoulder seasons—usually late September and occasionally May. Dee’s children are in their 20s and don’t have kids in school, although there are some “folks that have younger kids.” Even that doesn’t seem to be a reason not to show up. The local schools, Dee felt, “think that family vacations are as important (as being in the classroom).” For Dee and her family, the May or September vacations work well. The weather is still great—especially in September—and businesses are still operating at summer hours. The only thing missing is the “go, go, go” of the Outer Banks summer season.
“We just want easy” is how she describes what she and her family are looking for. “We want to go to dinner or lunch or happy hour whenever we want, and (that time of year) affords us the luxury to do that.” That “easy” sometimes includes some traveling. “We do the lighthouses. We go down to Hatteras. We go down to just different areas. We have a few spots that we like to shop in. The guys will go out on a boat and go fishing, or they’ll fish from the beach. We like to go to all the piers. Sometimes we just pier hop. And sometimes, “it’s either that or nothing.”
Understanding that her vacation may consist of just doing nothing is from the lessons learned when the kids were younger, and she recalled, “With Disney and all that stuff. It used to really stress me out. I found I had to just be so rigid and let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”
The key is to relax. Not worry about the little stuff or, as she said, “certainly don’t spend your vacation putting energy into the little stuff.”
She recalled a May vacation from a couple of years ago. The first week was great, and the second week a nor’easter rolled in, and for Dee the way to deal with that was obvious.
“It was so awesome to watch the ocean be so angry and have the waves crashing,” she said. “If it is lousy weather, I don’t care. It’s lousy weather. You’ve got plenty to do, and it’s fun.”
