Old Buildings & Sand Part 4- The Outer Banks

The blue arrow shows where we camped that night, along the banks of the Neuse River at a campground in the Croatan National Forest , which had nice facilities. 

Sunset over the Neuse River.  Maybe hard to see, but Debbie is just at the left edge of this photo.

The next morning, we got up and headed over to the Cedar Island ferry port.  The red line on the map above shows the general path we took riding the ferry over to Ocracoke Island, which is part of North Carolina’s Outer Banks.  As you can kinda see from the map above, the Outer Banks are a series of barrier islands which stick pretty far out into the Atlantic.  For those in Texas, these islands are the same thing that Mustang and Padre Islands are in our state.

Ocracoke was an interesting place.  It is pretty difficult to get to, so there were just fewer people over all and the pace was pretty relaxed on the whole island.  The island was very isolated for a long time, so the islanders developed a very unique accent.  It was heavily influenced by their English ancestors, but it became its own thing.  I watched a video on it, and some of the natives said even when they visit the North Carolina mainland, they will have people ask them if they are from Australia.  To give one example, when they want to fly somewhere they go to the “eye-er-port.” 

That night, thanks to research I had done on Tripadvisor about food options, we ate what was possibly the best Mexican food we have ever had.  There is a food trailer there called Eduardo’s Tacos.  It was amazing, all the more so for the fact that we were at one of the ends of the Earth eating food from a trailer.  There was a taco that involved mango, avocado, cilantro and a soft Mexican cheese that was grilled.  Best food of the trip.

Following that, we retired to our campsite.  Our tent is tall and spacious.  It serves our needs very well, we can even hang out inside it if it is really buggy out and use it like a shelter.  It does not however perform well in torrential blowing rainstorms.  The following morning we were woken violently by a collapsing and flooding tent that was no match for the storm.  We survived but ended up a little soggy.  We headed back into town to a funky little coffee shop.  There was standing water everywhere, and suddenly Mallards!  Mallards everywhere.  Every single large puddle had at least two or three Mallards attending it, bathing, swimming and eating.  No idea where they came from, but apparently they know to take advantage when opportunity presents.

This is the Ocracoke Lighthouse, one of the three lighthouses of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.  It is still functional today, although it runs on an automatic schedule.

Here’s Debbie trying to stay dry.

Another thing interesting about Ocracoke Island is that it was at one time Blackbeard’s favorite anchorage.  He could pass through Ocracoke Inlet and anchor his ships in a deep hole that was just offshore and protected from the ocean, which was not very far from where the lighthouse is at today.  Ocracoke is also the site of the greatest pirate party that ever occurred, courtesy of Blackbeard.  He put out the invitation, and apparently hundreds showed up.  They ate and drank rum for a week or longer, so the story goes. 

We only stayed one day on Ocracoke, and looking back wish we had stayed longer to explore the island, it was a neat place.  But, our schedule was calling, so we made our way to the north end of the island to another ferry port, so we could cross over to Hatteras Island.  While we were waiting to drive aboard, birds gathered…

This Laughing Gull is calling for a treat, but I think he was unsuccessful with our group of cars.

A Black Skimmer hanging out with the gulls and waiting for the sky to clear.

Once on the ferry, we had some birds trailing the boat.

A Common Tern in flight.

And another shot of a Laughing Gull.

As we crossed over to Hatteras Island, the rains followed us.  We visited a neat place called Graveyard of the Atlantic museum.  There are many shipwrecks in the area of the Outer Banks, and this museum is dedicated to the maritime history of the area.  Finally the rain started to relent and we were able to secure a campsite at the National Park Service campground near Frisco.

Here’s the sun setting over camp.  Being under the trees, our tent was much more sheltered than it was on Ocracoke.  The tradeoff was bugs.  Our tent got covered with harmless fuzzy caterpillars and many not-harmless ticks.

One of the more interesting aspects of camping here was the shower situation…

That’s the community bathhouse, four stalls (two on the other side).  I never saw anyone else even using the showers.  Kind of hard to see in this photo, but the lighting for the shower was provided via a skylight.  There was no electricity running to the bath house, so there were no night showers to be had.

That’s what a stall looks like.  There really wasn’t any place to put your things to keep them dry, you had to get creative.  There’s a grate in the bottom so that you wouldn’t be standing in debris (mostly beach sand).  Notice the rope…

This is what a campground shower head looks like.  Rig up a contraption of pipe with a cap.  Incorporate a spring-loaded handle (for a water faucet?).  Drill holes in the cap so you get something resembling a spray pattern.  If you want water, pull the rope.  Let go of the rope, goodbye water.  In practice, you let water run long enough to get wet.  Then soap up, and pull the rope again to rinse off.  You would not continuously use the water even if you could.  That’s because it came in one temperature- ice cold.  Oh and the water came out almost like a pressure washer in five blistering streams.  Showers happened very quickly.  I would tell you they were invigorating, but they weren’t.  They were just cold.  You can also see the skylight in the background in this photo.

This is the view from the dune crossing closest to our campground, looking out over the Atlantic Ocean.

Here’s Debbie engaging in one of her favorite activities- looking for shells.

Our first full day on Hatteras Island, we visited our second lighthouse of the trip:

Here’s an unobstructed view of it:

This is the tallest brick lighthouse in the United States, at 210 feet.  Its flash can be seen by ships that are 20 miles out to sea.  All lighthouses run a specific flash cadence so ships equipped with charts can determine where they are at based on that unique signal.

Here’s the most interesting thing about this lighthouse- that is not its original site!  In 1999, the original location was just 15 feet from the ocean due to coastal erosion (today that spot is now under water).  So contractors were hired, they built a path, hoisted the lighthouse up and rolled it on rails to its current location.  Pretty fascinating given that this is a really big, very static brick structure.

Here’s the lighthouse flashing at dusk.  This was at our campground where we crossed the dune over to the beach, and is about 4.5 miles from the lighthouse.  Even in the GPS age, lighthouses continue to run all night, every night.  Technology can and will fail and the old tried and true methods of navigation still serve a critical role.  Fortunately with a consistent pattern, I was able to time my shot to catch the flash.

The next day we visited our third and final lighthouse of the trip, the Bodie Island Lighthouse.  It is pronounced like body, not like bow-die.  You might also notice that each lighthouse I’ve shown has a different paint pattern.  This is to assist ships during daylight hours in case they are unsure of their location, something also noted in nautical charts.  While lighthouses all had keepers at one time, today none of them do.  They run on an automated schedule and are operated by a public entity, such as the National Park Service or the US Coast Guard.

I took this shot especially for all my people in the great state of Texas.  This picture is in fact NOT of Texas, it is still the Outer Banks.  If you look, you can see a sandy hill in the background.  That is the final dune, cross over that and you’re on the beach looking at the Atlantic Ocean. 

All too quickly, our vacation time had slipped past us.  We got to see a lot of history and got to spend a lot of time on beaches watching the endless ebb and flow of earth and sea.  On our last morning we knocked as many of the caterpillars off the tent as we could, packed it up, and made the long drive back across North Carolina to our house. 

As I like to do every time, I will leave you with a sunset photo.  This one is looking back across the dune field at our campground on Hatteras Island.  We hope you enjoyed sharing in our trip!  Brandon & Debbie