THE OUTER BANKS

Traveling east and making our way to the Atlantic Coast we stopped for a night at Westmoreland SP along the Potomac and then the First Landing SP on the ocean...both in Virginia and both worth staying at more than one night but we are on a schedule so we keep on moving.

As we traveled south along the coast toward the Outer Banks....a thin broken strand of islands curves out into the Atlantic Ocean and back again in a sheltering embrace of North Carolina's mainland coast and offshore sound. For thousands of years these islands have survived onslaughts of wind and sea. Their long stretches of beach, sand dunes, marches, and woodlands are set aside as Cape Hatteras Seashore.


Our timing to go through the Outer Banks "less our rainy welcome" was pretty good because we were at the end of there busy season and the weather after the first night was beautiful.

"Some of our fellow campers"

Only one of the three National Parks was still open for the season and it was only open for just one more week. It was on the Ocracoke Island the third in the chain, only accessible by boat or plane so we took a ferry to get on from Cape Hatteras and five days later we took a another ferry to Cedar Island.

We were joined on the island with Tony's brother George and wife Carol who's usual mode of transportation to Ocracoke Island from there home in New Bern NC is by sailboat which takes the better part of two days. This time he took his new "to him" jeep the approximately 95 miles trip that still takes around 41/2 hours because of the lengthily ferry ride.

"He has the right idea"

It was nice seeing George and Carol and having our own personal guided tour of the island and the non-stop history and oceanic navigation lesson.

"We also took time recharge our selves"

Of course when traveling along the coast...any coast the visit to the occasional lighthouse is one of our favorite things to do. Some lighthouses are off the beaten path but on the Outer Banks the beaten path is very close to the water 
....on both sides because you are on a stretch of bearer islands.

Lighthouses are marked in different ways so people traveling by boat can know where they are when approaching land. We visited the Ocracoke Lighthouse 
"solid white" the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse "striped like a barbers pole" and in the rain we past by the Bodie Island Lighthouse "white with two black vertical stripes.

What was most interesting about the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in 1999 it was moved 2,900 ft. in 23 days to a new foundation and restored "all 198.49 feet of it" because of ongoing erode on from the sea...Quite a engineering fete. 


It was great to see George and Carol and "maybe" we will remember a small portion of the many things we learned on this, our first, trip to the Outer Banks. 

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SanTony