Wind, Rain and Waves - Our Week In Waves NC [April 5-12, 2018]

I wait out of the wind, while Tiki waits for Russ to return with her B-A-L-L

Our week in Waves had every combination of sun, calm, wind, and rain that you can imagine.  Rain storms producing 2+ inches kept us indoors, and winds forecast with gusts at 50 mph kept us parked in the campground.  No matter, we love and appreciate all of the faces of life at the beach.  Here are photos of the marvelous and lovely beach at Waves in all of it's iterations.  Here also are pictures from some of our shorter adventures.

Weather Photos

We arrived on a sunny day

Then it turned stormy...

...leaving us in a wet campsite

Sometimes it was windy and sunny

Sometimes it was windy and grey

Sometimes it was windy and cloudless

The gulls were feeding off of something yummy brought in on the waves

Then, our last morning was beautiful and calm - of course it was, we were leaving...

Photos We'd Thought You'd Enjoy

The house from the movie "Nights in Rodanthe" -  just a short bike ride away

Bankers are proud of their Pirates, here is a sign from one of the MANY places selling "pirate stuff"

The Chicamacomico US Life-saving Service station building, built in 1874.  Museum is definitely worth a visit!

Actual lifeboat used in the daring 1918 rescue of the Mirlo - most decorated rescue in USLSS history

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse

Sunset over Pamlico Sound

Happy Us!

Delightful Ocracoke on a Rainy Day – Ocracoke NC [April 9, 2018]

In front of Silver Lake Harbor on the residential side of the harbor

The tiny, charming village of Ocracoke feels in some ways like a small Key West, without the overabundance of bars.  It is laid back and quaint.  The eclectic buildings are strewn helter skelter beside the road ways.  Many restaurants and inns are repurposed older homes.  The few roads are mostly narrow lanes, and are lined with venerable live oaks draped in Spanish moss and the occasional palm tree.  In April, traffic seemed to surge with the arrival or departure of ferries, and then be non-existent in between.  We imagine that during the summer months, it would be best to leave your car parked, and get around by foot or bicycle.  The whole village is about a half mile long.

Ocracoke is the southern-most of the islands that are part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.  To get there we drove an hour from Waves, through Avon, Buxton, Frisco to the tiny town of Hatteras.  We stopped off to say “hi” to the lovely Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in Buxton.  The drive took about an hour, most of it past tall, sandy dunes separating the road from the ocean on one side and salt marsh and scrub separating the road from Pamlico Sound on the other.  In some places, recent strong winds and heavy rains had swept sand off the dunes onto the road. 

Aboard the ferry

Good bye to Hatteras...

You get to Ocracoke by ferry.  While the distance looks very short on a map, the area is very shallow with ever shifting shoals of sand.  The ferries meander along deep channels.  The ferry trip took another hour.  We left the campground at 9:15 and landed on Ocracoke at noon.  Since we were in the motor home, we just fixed ourselves an early light lunch, ate at the dinette and watched the waves go by.

The town of Ocracoke across Silver Lake Harbor with the lighthouse in the background

The centerpiece of Ocracoke village is an almost perfectly round harbor called Silver Lake.  It was once Cockle Creek.  During World War II, the US Navy dredged the creek to create a deep water harbor to house and support the fleet of vessels used to combat the u-boats sinking ships off of the Outer Banks.  The harbor and other improvements like paved roads stimulated connections by ferry (three have regularly scheduled service) and tourism.  Silver Lake is very lovely.  It is surrounded by dockside restaurants and hotels in the downtown area, and docks and picnic tables in the residential area.

Ocracoke Lighthouse

Ocracoke has a lighthouse that is said to be the oldest lighthouse in continuous operation since 1823.  The lighthouse is not open for climbing to the public, but the base is occasionally opened for visitors during the summer.

Another view of town with the lighthouse

We parked the motor home in large, empty lot downtown by the National Park Service headquarters, and explored the town by foot.  What had started as an intermittent drizzle while we were on the road developed into a persistent rain during our walk.  We didn’t carry a map, just followed the road around the harbor and then kept the lighthouse in our sights as we walked toward it.  There aren’t many roads, and it would be hard to go wrong.  You will notice water drops on the camera lens in some of our photos.

Ocracoke was famous for the wild Banker horses that had roamed the island for 300 years.  When they started getting struck and killed by tourists with cars in the 1960’s, the horses were confined to a 100 acre corral.  The herd is maintained by the NPS.  There is a viewing area of the Pony Pen, with a few barns and buildings with roofs.  The sensible horses were huddled under the roofs out of the rain while the silly tourists stood in the rain trying to take their pictures.  Hence, no photos of horses in this blog.

The entrance to Silver Lake Harbor

One of Ocracokes most famous residents is Edward Teach, alias Blackbeard the pirate.  This was one of his favorite hang outs and was where he was eventually killed.

Ocracoke Seafood Market

An island paradise like Ocracoke is a seafood eaters dream.  We bought seafood for the next night’s dinner at the Ocracoke Watermen's Seafood Company a non-profit organization where local watermen sell their seafood “caught the old fashioned way.”  We stopped for lunch at one of the many seafood restaurants around 3:00, starting the meal with hot chowder and hot coffee.  Dana had fish and chips – the fish was locally caught blue fish.

There is something very appealing, original and unselfconscious about Ocracoke.  Vacation rental houses are often old fishermen’s homes with peeling paint and sagging porches.  There are two campgrounds on the island, and we are hoping to return someday soon.

The Lost Colony on Roanoke Island – Fort Raleigh and the Elizabethan Gardens, Manteo NC [April 9, 2018]

The stormy Atlantic Ocean

Growing up in Virginia, Dana learned about the famous Lost Colony, the unsuccessful English settlement that vanished, and of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World.  It wasn’t until she was an adult that she learned that this colony was in North Carolina, and not in Virginia as she had thought.  Just shows how Virginia-centric her early education was.

In fact, Roanoke Island is near North Carolina’s Outer Banks, so we thought it would be a good stop while we were exploring here.  We had a free week between responsibilities, so we headed to OBX - not too far from home, sandy and salty.  We arrived in Waves on a picture perfect early Spring Thursday, and enjoyed another beautiful day the next day.  Friday afternoon, the wind kicked up, plastering sand to the backs of our necks and filling our ears with grit.   Saturday it rained 2+ inches with high winds that increased to gale force overnight into Sunday.  We decided to wait out the high winds rather than try to drive a high profile motor home in a gale. 

Sunday afternoon, when the winds decreased to a mere small craft advisory, we drove from Waves up to Roanoke Island and Fort Raleigh National Historic Site (Happy 102th Birthday NPS).  There is a wonderful museum in Fort Raleigh, but not a whole lot else to see.  So, we don’t have a lot of pictures for you. 

Statue of Queen Elizabeth I who chartered the colony (statue located in the Elizabethan Gardens)

The area was originally explored in 1584 with an expedition of two ships sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh.  They found the native people welcoming and helpful.  In fact, two native men returned to England with them.  The expedition returned with tales of the wonderful new land.

In 1585, 107 men returned with the goal of settling and claiming the land for England.  They explored, drew maps, and documented the flora, fauna and life of the Algonquian people.  Their commander Sir. Richard Grenville returned to England to get more supplies.  Relations with the native people deteriorated, and the English murdered the native chief.  Fortuitously for the Brits, Sir Francis Drake happened to sail by, so the settlement decamped with him. Grenville returned soon after to find them gone, and left 15 men to hold the land for the Crown.

In 1587, 117 men, women and children returned to establish a permanent settlement.  They were supposed to settle in the Chesapeake Bay region but stopped at Roanoke Island to pick up the 15 men.  They found the body of 1 man, and no others.  Their unscrupulous ship’s captain refused to take them further, preferring to go down to Florida to harass Spanish ships, so the colonists were abandoned on Roanoke Island.  The native people had not forgotten what had happened before, and tensions escalated.  The colony governor, John White (artist on the previous expedition and grandfather of newly born Virginia Dare) was persuaded to return to England for more supplies.  England was at war with Spain, so he was not able to return until 1590.  When he did return, the word CROATOAN was carved into a post and CRO was carved into a tree.  They had agreed if the settlement was to move, they would leave word of where they had gone.  A hurricane prevented White from heading to Croatoan Island (now Hatteras Island) to see if the colonists had moved there, and he had to return home to England.  The colonists were never seen again.

The restored earthen works from the settlement

Archeologists have found remains of small earthen works that probably surrounded the scientific labs of the first settlement.  Scientists were sent to find precious metals as part of that group.  These grass-covered earthen works have been reconstructed.

Lovely camellia

On the same campus as the Historic Site, are the Elizabethan Gardens.  Built in the early 1950s, the gardens pay tribute to the gardens of Elizabethan England that the lost colonists had left to come to the new world.  The camellias were finishing their winter blooming season, and the azaleas were just getting started.  We enjoyed the lovely blooms after what has felt like a prolonged winter.  We could only imagine how lovely these gardens must be when they are in full bloom.

Nothing says "Spring" like azaleas...

Fort Raleigh is a sobering reminder of how dangerous and chance-y it was for the English settlers who were colonizing the New World.  It is the beginning of a sad tale of the treatment of the Native Peoples who had complex and well developed cultures here.  The Algonquian culture and language were well documented by the first settlement.  While there isn’t “much” to see and do at the historic site, it is definitely worth a visit.

...and tulips