I have been pretty out of touch lately…but I have an excuse, honestly!  We went to the beach at Topsail Island, NC!  We typically go to a beach somewhere in NC but this was our first year at Topsail (pronounced Top-sul).  Anyhow, I’ll get to the pics of me in a bikini later but first, let me tell you about the trip there.  From Charleston, we have to travel south on the WV turnpike which is a toll-road.  Typically we pay our 6 bucks each way and forget about it, but this year, we discovered something new…E-Z Pass!  I always figured those lanes that nobody used were for decoration only…or maybe WV got extra booths because they were on sale.  My sister-in-law educated us about the E-Z Pass system which is what those always-empty lanes are really for!

Emily went on down to the West Virginia Parkways Authority and bought our transponder.  Basically we just had to load a $20 credit on our device (which required a $5 refundable deposit).  The device hangs on the windshield behind the mirror and is out of sight.  Now get this, it took Emily mere minutes to fill out the paperwork (at a government agency) and walk out of the building with our very own you-can-use-the-empty-lane-on-the-toll-roads transponder.  Instead of the typical $2 per stop, with the E-Z Pass system, the toll is only $1.30…so on our trip, we saved$4.20 which almost covered my recommended daily allowance of Mountain Dew for the trip down.

Do you ever feel that special happy feeling down in your belly when you get to do something cool that puts you in front of other cars, saves you some money and speeds you on to the beach faster than normal?  Yeah, me too.  We took pictures of cars around us and the empty lanes each time we came upon a toll booth…I was like a kid in a toll booth shop!