Stop and Smell the People

TravelBlog: Do this before you die…

It stupefies me how many Carolinians have never been to the North Carolina Outer Banks. Why locals drive all the way to Florida do sit on an overcrowded beach is a mystery. If you’re 18, I get it. If you have a family or just want to leave the rat race behind, OBX is a MUST!

The OBX (Outer Banks) is that long, skinny strip of sand sitting in the ocean stretching from the Virginia border all that way down to Cape Lookout. The Atlantic Ocean sits to its east and the Pamlico and Roanoke Sounds to its west. You can throw in the island just west of Cape Lookout, Shackleford Banks, as well. Shackleford is where one of the two herds of wild coastal horses lives. The other is at the top on the OBX near the Virginia border… they’re called the Corolla herd.

I realize from some locations in the western parts of South and North Carolina it’s a haul. From Charlotte it’s about a six-hour drive. Yet people pile in the family truckster and head for Florida beaches, which are just as far or farther.

I’ve heard a number of people say they drive to Florida because of Disney World. I like Disney World. It’s magical. Every family should go there

once or twice. It’s easy to keep the kids busy and distracted until everyone collapses from exhaustion back at the hotel. I get the value in that. But I would bet you (and probably win) that when you come back from that kind of vacation, mom and dad are not relaxed and rejuvenated. It’s been fun… but there wasn’t time to unravel the stress in your life. There wasn’t time to unwind.

And so I ask you to do this one thing before you die… peel that layer of dookie from your brain by spending a week on the North Carolina Outer Banks.

It’s a different kind of vacation. The distractions are as few as you like. It may take a day or two to get used to the silence… only the sound of waves crashing. Sit out on your deck at night and see more stars than you ever new existed. See how many constellations your kids can spot. You’ll be forced to talk with your children and they’ll be forced to connect with you. Teach your son how to cast a line into the ocean and try to catch some dinner. Take a tandem sea kayak out and spend a couple hours with your daughter looking for dolphins. Learn to surf. Try hang gliding on the soft sands of Jockey’s Ridge.

Hike to the top of the most famous and beautiful lighthouses in the world… Cape Hatteras or

Currituck Light, and look out over the rarest of landscapes you’ll find. Read pirate stories at night and go hunting for beached shipwrecks by day. There are plenty. Take the family on a horseback ride on the beach! Or just sprawl out on the warm sand and snooze… read… or build sandcastles… then watch the tide come wash it away.

It’s a long day to get to Ocracoke and back but well worth the trip. You can drive your car onto a ferry at Hatteras… Bring a cooler because in the center of town on the lagoon is Ocracoke Seafood Company where the local fishermen bring their daily catch.

The OBX is a different kind of vacation. Hotels are few and far between. Most people rent houses for a week at a time. Sometimes people bring their neighbors or their brother or sister and their families along to reconnect with dear friends.

Remember, there is no roller coaster on the OBX. What there is plenty of… is opportunity. Opportunity to reconnect with your own family… and maybe your own you.

Links and more info…

Where I eat:

On Ocracoke Island it feels like you've walked back in time...

Windmill Point Restaurant

On the Roanoke Sound side at milepost 16.5
HWY 158 Bypass, Nags Head, NC

(252) 441-0535  or 1535

http://www.windmillpointrestaurant.com/

Pier House Restaurant
(Casual breakfast & lunch hanging over the ocean, enjoy the sunrise!)

Nags Head Pier, Nags Head, NC 27959

252-441-5141

http://www.nagsheadpier.com/food.htm

The Breakwater at Oden’s Dock in Hatteras Village
(excellent food in nice setting overlooking Pamlico Sound)

252-986-2733

http://www.odensdock.com

Bouy’s Restaurant in Buxton
(stick with the fresh local seafood part of the menu)

252-995-6575

47355 HWY 12 Buxton, NC

Where I stay:

I like to stay south of Nags Head closer to Buxton… Avon is my favorite area.

Hatteras Realty
(these are the folks I work with)

800-428-8372

http://www.hatterasrealty.com

Rentals on the Ocean
(another good company with a great reputation, pets welcome)

252-441-5005

http://www.rentalsontheocean.com

What I do:

Horseback Ride on the beach with Equine Adventures

Call Sylvia Mattingly
252-305-1617 or 252-995-4897

http://www.equineadventures.com

Visit Currituck Lighthouse

The Red Brick Lighthouse at the junction of Highway 158 and Route 12

Take Route 12 heading north towards Duck and Corolla.

The lighthouse entrance is 20 miles from the junction, on the left, just beyond the Whalehead Club sign.

http://www.outerbanks.com/historiccorolla/

Visit Hatteras Lighthouse

Which is NOT in Hatteras the town.  It’s in Buxton. You can’t miss it no matter what direction you’re going!

http://www.nps.gov/archive/caha/capelight.htm http://www.hatteras-nc.com/light/

Take Ferry to Ocracoke Island http://www.ncdot.org/transit/ferry/routes/schedule/route003.html http://www.ocracokeisland.com/

Hang Gliding Lessons at Jockey’s Ridge State Park

http://www.kittyhawk.com/hanggliding/introduction.cfm

Plenty of camping:

The Ferry to and from Ocracoke Island...

www.capehatteraskoa.com

www.capewoods.com

www.hatterassands.com

www.outer-banks.nc.us/tgod/camping/obcamp.htm

TravelBlog: Be a lightkeeper at Cape Lookout Lighthouse!

Where to go… What to do… Who to smell…

Tall Ship "Alliance"

DESTINATION: Cape Lookout Lighthouse, NC

My first trip to Cape Lookout was one big tease.

I was there to cover the “Tall Ships” sailing into Beaufort, NC.  That was a great story unto itself but not the type of thing you can tell others to go do. The Tall Ships sailing into a Carolina port may happen only once in a lifetime. Glad I was there to see it… and to sail on the Meka II with a pirate… but it was the lighthouse off in the distance I was itching to see close up. It’s the only one on the North Carolina Coast I hadn’t been in, or to the top of, or done a story about… Cape Lookout Lighthouse.

Some have said I have a lighthouse fetish. I don’t think so. I think anyone who isn’t drawn to these coastal giants is a colossal weirdo. Especially if you’re not drawn to the group of North Carolina Outer Banks Lighthouses. They are a living history of our maritime past. They are the guardians of the sea. Every man woman and child in this country should plan a trip to visit these beacons of the “Graveyard of the Atlantic.”

In my SASTP Travel-Blogs I will eventually take you to each of these North Carolina lights: the tallest and most famous is Hatteras, built 1870; Bodie Island is the middle brother built 1872; Currituck is the youngest, built in 1875 and the only one left as unpainted red brick; Okracoke is the oldest, built in 1823, and the shortest at 65 feet and also the only one coated with a layer of cement and painted head-to-toe all white; and then there’s Cape Lookout, built in 1859, the first of the tall brick Outer banks lights sailors would see heading north from Florida and the Caribbean.

I’ll start with Cape Lookout because there is an unusual twist regarding the oldest of the four tall brick lighthouses on the Outer Banks.

Here’s the twist: for six weeks you can be the lightkeeper at Cape Lookout! All you have to do is apply (call 252-728-2250 ext.3008) and wait your turn. When they call, you have to live in the lightkeeper’s house at the foot of Cape Lookout Light and run the information booth. It’s a house and all but life is not suburban by any means. You have to boat on and off the island. So planning out grocery/provisions shopping is key. And in the off season it can be a lonely place. But the payoff is a truly rare experience. I talked to one couple who were just wrapping up their six-week stay… they were from New York and were heartbroken to leave Cape Lookout. “It gets in your blood,” they said.  “The silence will heal you,” they told me.

Here’s the setting: from the lightkeeper’s front porch you look out onto a couple hundred feet of perfect white-sand beach and the calm cool waters of Back Sound. 1400 feet from the back door is the unpredictably wild Atlantic Ocean. From the second floor of the house you can see both beaches. It’s absurd. Absolutely stunning.

Cape Lookout to me is the most serene of the Outer Banks lights with what is clearly the most majestic setting (now that Cape Hatteras Lighthouse has been moved inland from its original perch at the edge of the ever encroaching Atlantic). My guide was Cape Lookout National Seashore Ranger Wouter Ketel (pronounced WOW-ter KAY-tull). He took me up to the top and even in to the light tower to see the enormous light bulb changed by the Coast Guard.

If you’re going for a visit, you’ll need a ferry to get to Cape Lookout.  And there are oodles of Inn and Bed & Breakfast’s in Beaufort.  There are also a myriad of hotels in Morehead City and beach houses at Atlantic Beach. And there are cabins on the island and even primitive camping on the beach in the shadow of the lighthouse. But if you can somehow swing a six-week stint at the Lighthouse that would be an experience you would never forget!

Don’t forget to stop and smell the people… MR

TravelBlog: Bald and beautiful… since 1817!

Where to go… What to do… Who to smell…

DESTINATION: Bald Head Island, NC.

[For Margaret Schneck (one of the two #40,00 winners) who wrote in and asked about what I do on Bald Head Island.  She'll be honeymooning there in September!]

If you’ve never been, Bald Head Island is down in the far right bottom corner of North Carolina.  It’s the exact the point where the Cape Fear River barrels into the Atlantic Ocean.  It’s sub-tropical climate makes it a haven for wildlife of all types. You can get onto the island only by boat or ferry. No cars are allowed. You park them at the ferry landing. Once on the island it’s bikes and golf carts only!  Bald Head is a privately owned Island with very controlled development.

Home to the oldest standing lighthouse in North Carolina the beauty of Bald Head Island is the silence. Wind, waves, birds… and more waves.  This is one of those “leave the rat race behind” type places.  It has a couple hundred dwellings, a small boat harbor, an ancient lighthouse and beautiful, long, empty beaches.

The lighthouse, “Old Baldy,” was built in 1817 and it bares the wounds of a hundred hurricanes and nor’easters.  The light is no longer in service but remains a big attraction for island visitors. I’ve talked with people who have jimmied the door open and rode out hurricanes inside the old light.  This is actually not allowed… but has happened.  The folks who did it figured, “If it’s gone threw every hurricane since 1817, it’ll handle one more.”  But let me be clear, this is not allowed. Mostly.

One of the highlights for me is Loggerhead Turtle hatching season from early August to early October. If you log-on to the Bald Head Island Conservancy website they have a running turtle nest count (currently 31).  This is a rare island because they have a full time staff dedicated to the preservation of the island’s wild inhabitants and the education of its human visitors. BHI beach is one of the densest Loggerhead nesting sites in the country.

It’s well worth giving the conservancy a call, 910-457-0089, to find out about the turtle nests and where you might see one hatch (which almost always happens under cover of darkness).  Each turtle nest on the island is marked, protected and monitored… and as a nest gets closer to hatching there is sometimes 24-7 monitoring.  This is one of the five beaches in the country where they are tagging every adult female nesting on BHI.

The “Who to Smell” on Bald Head is not a person. It’s these tiny Loggerhead hatchlings.  Only a small number of the tens of thousands of baby loggerheads hatched along the east coast will live to maturity and lay more eggs.  And those few survivors will spend their lives circumnavigating the globe… until pregnancy. Then each pregnant turtle will find its way back to the exact beach where it was hatched decades earlier and lay it’s own eggs there.  It is one of the most beautiful stories of earth-creature connections you will ever hear.

For the human creatures there is golf on BHI.  But what I love to do in our coastal marshes is Kayak.  It’s great fun and very popular on Bald Head Island.  It feels like you’re on the other side of the planet. It’s nothing to be afraid of but worth noting, there are alligators living on the island.  One great place to spy a gator is at the Wildlife Overlook off  Stede Bonnet Wynde road.

If you must got out to dinner for the evening I recommend leaving the island and eating at “The Cape Fear Restaurant” at 101 W. Bay Street in Southport, NC, Ph: 910-457-9222.  Fresh seafood at a family owned eatery on the water.  Can’t beat it! Southport is the historic fishing village directly across from Bald Head Island.  Its claim to fame is one of bloody gore… but the Hollywood kind. Much of the 1997 teen slasher movie “I Know What You Did Last Summer” was filmed here.  If you stand on the corner of Yacht Basin Drive and West Bay Street and look toward Bald Head Island, the fish house on that outer-most point is where the creepy man in the yellow fishing suit with the giant hook did his dirty deed.  You can walk right in.  I have.  Met a man there named Ivy Gaskill… a fisherman who kept a live alligator on his boat.  But that’s another story…

Well, honeymooners, enjoy the smells of Bald Head Island… MR