Wandering Where We’ll Be

The University of North Carolina is a very beautiful place in a “historic” way.  The buildings remind me of Boston with all the brick siding and boxy old world charm…bell tower included.  I’m beginning to think all campuses have this same “look” to them to appear “intellectual” enough to attract students to their “time-honored, foundation-of-knowledge”.  I wonder how many students would be attracted to a dumpy old cardboard shell of a building; even if it had the wisdom of the ancients inside?  Or, is it all eye candy to fool others into thinking “knowledge is at hand”.  Anyway, I liked a number of bushes and trees in the area.  The sidewalks were brick of varying types in different areas of the campus.  We eventually walked Jake off of the campus and next to a busy highway…whoops.  We made our way back to campus through a residential area. .  We were in an upper class neighborhood and the houses were tucked away in greenery and bright flowers.  They have Ivy for lawns on many lots.  We made it back to campus and drove away.

We have decided that Tim is WAY better at map following than I am.  He told me that I am better at getting around a place if I have seen it at least once because I remember landmarks.  Anyway, we couldn’t find highway 86.  We must have crossed it 3 times but we couldn’t find it.  We went another way back to our campsite.  The rain finally stopped, but the sun was too low in the sky to warm our campsite..I could see my breath.  After a fire, we went to bed.

Woke, to a sunny day, YYEEAAAHH!  We were off to the next camping site.  Driving, driving, driving; the campsite directions were weird and after some turning back and wandering about, we found it..Oyster Point.  Next to an estuary, it was a hot, dry, windy place with deer flies and lone star wood ticks.  Then, as we set up the tent and rain fly, A THUNDERHEAD ROLLED IN AND IT STARTED TO RAIN!!!!……AGAAIINNN!!!!  Well, it stopped within half and hour and the sky cleared after about 1 ½ hours.  We went for a short hike and then went to sleep.

I woke up after Tim.  He already had eaten and had breakfast burritos waiting for me.  Then before we cleaned up and set down to go on with our trip, we gave Jake a dental treat.  He has never had something that he chews on (verses inhales) out in a green “yard” before so what he did next was a surprise.  He buried his treat as we watched.  We laughed.  Little did Jake know, he would never see that beloved treat again as we put him in the back of the truck and drove away (evil laugh follows this statement).

The next day, we made it to Beaufort (pronounce bo-fort verses byoo-ford).  In said town was the Maritime Museum for the area.  Blackbeard apparently lived here in his day and eventually met his demise at the hands of the English navy.  They cut off his head, tied it to the yardarm (I think that’s what you call the long forward jutting arm of a sailing ship) and displayed it as they came into the next town to prove Blackbeard was dead.

No, the museum didn’t have his head on display.

It did have lots of shell types, old ship equipment and lots of history about the area.  We walked around the touristy area looking for a T-shirt shop with a Blackbeard motif. Found a lot of t-shirts but nothing I liked.  The rest of the day was almost pure truck driving.  At 3pm, we made it to a ferry crossing startpoint at Cedar point.  The next ferry was at 6pm to Ocracoke.

  How to waste time for 3 hours with a dog, class 101.
  First, use the restroom. Next, go to small gift shop.  Both of these steps to be performed with energetic little dog locked in the car with windows partially open.  Next, with dog, have late lunch on beach.  While having lunch, endure 40 mph gusts of wind off Pamlico Sound right next to you while being pelted by white sand blowing at you like a small sandstorm at times.  Your next step will be to take the dog for a walk down the driving wind beach; letting him sniff at various things and stopping him from eating unsavory stuff you don’t want coming up later in your tent.  We saw a decomposing dolphin carcass (we think, it was still a little gross but not too bad to look at..Jake wasn’t interested in it).  After said walk, step whatever in how to waste time consists of reading in the truck while your tired dog licks himself free of sand and goes to sleep.  Then, without dog, go and watch kite surfers nearby.  The wind is so strong and the kites are large like partial parachutes that when the surfer “jumps” a wave, he is literally 30 feet or higher in the air.  Then, without going out of the water, he uses the wind to get himself back at his starting point to do the same thing. This looked really cool.  The last step in the process will be after the arrival of the ferry to Ocracoke.  You will drive onto the ferry and get out of the car to winds that are in excess of what you have already endured and you will be on that ferry for another 2 ½ hours.  Enjoy.

We spent the night at Teeters, a backyard RV and tent site on Ocracoke Island in the outer banks of North Carolina.  That night, we ate at Howard’s End, a bar in a lodgelike building with license plates of cute sayings, college pennants, different country flags, and lots of other knickknacks.  It was fun and the food was good.  Tim had a fish sandwich and a Blue Moon beer and I had a hamburger with a Rogue Dead Guy beer.  After that, we drove back to the windy campsite and went to bed.

Next day, we were off and running.  Quick shower in the morning, set down the tent, eating granola snacks for breakfast, we headed for the lighthouse.  We found it.  Looked neat but we couldn’t go in.  Then we went on a search for a T-shirt.  I wanted one that wasn’t so “IN-YOUR-FACE”.  Beaufort had t-shirts as I said but why I didn’t like them is they would have nothing or something small and cute on the front (which I didn’t mind), but on the back, a huge piraty picture done in colors and sayings you could see from a satellite (not my idea of the type of thing I would wear).  This area was a favorite spot of Blackbeard.  His real name was Edward Teach.  I found said T-shirt at a place called Teach’s Hole.  The shirt (red) has about a fist-sized emblem of a Jolly Roger (skull and crossbones) and below it, says “TEACH’S HOLE, OCRACOKE ISLAND”.

We went on to Cape Hatteras and the lighthouse they have there.  We stopped at a beach to let Jake run free and tire him out as well as to see the ocean.  He was so cute as we ran around and played with him and he ran between us to play with both of us as Tim was near the water and I was halfway up the sandy beach (about 100 feet).  We collected some shells and then drove.  As a side note, gas is about $3.10 on average here at this time (we are doing all this driving and not telling you about gas prices so I thought I’d put it in).  When we reached the lighthouse we couldn’t go to the top and be on the outside little rail walk area because of the wind.  The average wind of Kittyhawk, which is nearby is around 30-40 mph (according to a Wright Brothers display at their museum for 1903).  I’d say the wind hasn’t changed much.  It definitely feels that fast or faster almost all the time.  I am wearing many layers since I get cold in 80 degree heat much less 50 degree [guess] with wind.  The lighthouse is said to be the tallest on the coast at over 200 feet high.  It is candy cane striped in black and white.  We went inside and climbed all the way up and looked out thru the door which they had open for people to see since we couldn’t go out.  The Diamond Coast is said to be the graveyard of the Atlantic with all the ships that have sank in the area.  The lighthouse was actually moved over 1500 feet to the west in 1999 since the coast has eroded away over the last 100 or so years and was only within about 100 feet of the ocean before the move (it used to be 1600 feet from the ocean way back when).  They moved it in one piece and this feat was a fantastic undertaking because of the size of this thing and trying to keep it from falling apart in the move.  We continued on.  We stopped for lunch at a place called The Fish House.  Good food.  The floors were tilted toward the water because this place used to be a real fish house and the containers they kept the fish would drain away excess water on the floor to the water edge.

Now we needed to find a campsite for the night.  On the way, we drove by big sand dunes (on highway 12 in the outer banks between Cape Hatteras and Bodie Island lighthouse)  Tim wanted to go out and walk on them but because we didn’t know where we were going to camp, we didn’t.  Also, we didn’t know if it would be allowed since when you walk on major blowing, eroding sand dunes, they move a lot.  This was displayed to us clearly because the sand was actually covering some of the road in places as the dunes were blown in that direction.  Think driving over the edge of a small but steep soft hill at over 50 mph.  It got to be about 1 foot deep at times (only about twice and only for about 3 feet long, all the rest we went around or wasn’t worth bringing up)

We eventually found a campsite really close to the Wright Brothers Museum in Kill Devil Hills.  This site was slightly creepy since they had tubs with live crabs in them.  Some of them were dead.  I assume they died fighting each other since I did see one eating another from underneath its shell, kinda like a tick embedded in your skin….EEEWWWW! 

This morning, we went to the Museum.  It has a couple of big memorials outside.  Yes it is STILL windy and I’m wearing my layers.  Then we went inside and read all the historic stuff.  Very cool. 

We have since driven to Hampton, Virginia.  Tim is doing laundry wherever he found a Laundromat while I write this blog.
Things are going well but we are hoping to find a place to stay for a longer period (longest stay we’ve had thus far is 2 nights).  Since this is the east coast, we assume we will find somewhere with many things to do and will require more than 2 nights to do them.

I think I am done with this blog entry,
Talk later,
Dan

Tags: Ferry, North Carolina, U.S. Segment 1

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