We "slept in" until 8:30 on Friday June 1st and since that was close to 8 hours of sleep we weren't dragging. We stayed at the Ramada Inn at Nags Head in the town of Kill Devil Hills. Our room was on the 5th floor of the building and was billed as having a "view" but that ended up being of the parking lot. :-/ So the first I got to see of the Atlantic Ocean was out of the windows in the restaurant in the hotel. And what a beautiful view it was...
They had a whole series of decks that got you out over the dunes and down to the beach. There was also a gazebo with a bar in it and nightly they'd have music out on the deck. There was a shower and these nifty little foot washers that turned on automatically when you would stand on them. They also had these fantastic hammock chairs that were so comfy you didn't feel like leaving except for the mosquitos attacking you. I am seriously considering getting one, if only I can find a place to put it at my house. So after breakfast (grits anyone?) Mom and I headed down for a quick walk on the beach before heading out to the places on our flexible itinerary. The temperature was close to 80 and the water was so warm! Walking in it made me think of Hawaii again and although the water in North Carolina wasn't bathwater temperature, we were told later in the summer it gets that warm. There were little clam shells everywhere! You could just stop and look down and pick up 20 or more of them! Whole! They were pretty small, but we found a couple larger ones on the shore. The waves broke really close to shore too! About where you'd be waist-deep these giant waves would be crashing. We walked north for a while and then turned back. The seagulls were a bit different too, with black markings at the ends of their beaks. On our way back to the hotel we saw a whole flock of sandpipers walking along the beach with all the people, running up the sand as the waves came in and then running back down to pipe the now wet sand.
We left to go up to the Currituck Lighthouse near Corolla, which was about a 20 minute drive north. With the daylight we could finally see all the houses and scenery there was to see. All of the houses were on stilts and looked new, which is generally a bad sign. ;) But they were so gorgeous. All were at least 3 stories tall on top of the 1 story of stilt and had decks on practically every level including the roof! They were all sorts of colors, blue and coral and pink and yellow, all with white trim. We house hunted a little as we drove and picked out our favorite place to live (shyeah, in our dreams). The town of Duck had this really nice bike path that ran parallel to the road and wove in and out of nicely manicured vegetation that separated it from the road. There were also horses that were painted with all sorts of different paintings, kind of like the cows you see around the northwest sometimes. There was one that was painted like a monarch butterfly and another that was all blinged out in sparkly zebra stripes. I took a picture of one that had wings and a mermaid painted on it.
Finally we got to the lighthouse which was so tall! But the area being so flat they have to get the light up high enough to overcome the curvature of the earth so it can be seen far out at sea. The Currituck Lighthouse is all red brick and was first lit in 1875.
It was open to climb, so Mom and I paid to climb the 214 steps to the top. It wasn't to bad since the steps would wind around to a landing and you weren't just climbing and climbing. Mom made it up about two landings before her fear of heights started to overcome her. I was worried she couldn't make it back down, but she said it was the going up that was the scary part. She really wanted to make it to the top to see the first order Fresnel lens so I told her to look at the wall as we climbed. It was really thick and so the thought that she was in something very safe calmed her a bit. We made it to the top and there was a door that opened to a viewing platform with quite a wind coming in it. I told her to stay inside and I would see what there was out there. Even I was a bit freaked out at the height and hugged the wall as I made my way around. Unfortunately there was no access to the lens and so after taking some pictures from the top we headed back down. We stopped in the gift shop and Mom got books (of course!) and I got paintings and wood hangings for the house and a nice bag (of course!).
Our next stop was to the knitting store I had found online, Knitting Addiction. I drove back towards Kill Devil Hills so Mom could get to see all the houses and painted horses. When I got to where the Google Map instructions said it would be, I missed the road. Turning around and heading back I found it, but the strip mall it led us to looked pretty empty. I went in and asked if the store had closed at a deli still in the complex and they said it had moved down the Croatan Highway to around milepost 8.5. And yes they have half-mile mileposts all down the highway, which really helps since the highway is straight and flat! There was a big purple sign out front the guy said, so we shouldn't miss it. As we drove that direction I realized we'd hit the Wright Brothers National Memorial before milepost 8.5, so we stopped there first. There was a nice museum that we walked through with all the history and replicas of the wind tunnel the Wright Brothers built to test their airfoils and two full size replicas of the planes they built, one a glider they built in 1902 and the other a motor powered flying machine they built in 1903. Amazing that in little over 10 years there would be fully maneuverable metal aircraft that would be used in World War I.
We walked out to the rail that they used to launch the motored flying machine from and saw the distances they went on their first flight that were marked with stones.
Mom and I also walked up to the monument that is built on Kill Devil Hill, the tallest hill in the area and the place where the brothers launched their gliders. It was incredibly windy and we both almost got blown over a couple of times. The monument is gorgeous with what looks like wings carved in the sides.
It was time to fill up the car and we had been scoping out gas stations as we drove. No ARCO gas stations here, it was either HUFF or Kangaroo gas, and we chose a Kangaroo gas station with a decent price. Our next stop was to Fort Raleigh, the site of the first English settlement in the new world. We drove around over the bridge to the island of Roanoke and through the town of Manteo. Okay after driving through there we changed our minds and decided this would be the place to live. Seriously even the elementary school was posh.
We made it to Fort Raleigh a bit late and they were closing up in 15 minutes, so I stopped at the ticket desk and got our tickets I pre-bought for "The Lost Colony" outdoor drama they've had at the site for 75 years. We had to eat dinner and didn't want to eat at Pizza Hut so I asked the lady at the ticket counter what would be a good place to eat in Manteo. She directed us to Darrell's a local restaurant and it was great food! I tried the Hatteras version of clam chowder which was in a clear broth and didn't have many potatoes. We split some flounder and popcorn shrimp and I had hushpuppies for the first time which were delicious! They are a deep fried, fine milled cornbread that you slather butter on and can't stop eating! We also each got a slice of key lime and lemon pie and split those back and forth. I am now searching for a key lime pie recipe, it was so tasty!
We had a bit of time to kill before the play so we headed back to the hotel to get a real walk on the beach in. There were a few clouds moving in and some looked ominously dark. I hadn't bought the rain insurance for the play and was getting a bit paranoid. It had been a beautiful sunny day before this! As we drove back there was a civil alert warning on the radio. I laughed and said around here these might be important! And yes, instead of the usual message that it was "only a test" they said that there was a "tornado warning issued for the following counties, Currituck..." and they kept listing counties but no cities! I turned to Mom and said, "What county are we in!?" We turned on the TV when we got in and watched the local station for the news. It turned out the warning was for the northern most end of the outer banks and neither Fort Raleigh or Kill Devil Hills was included in the warning. So we went out and walked the beach, south this time, and picked up more shells and had a nice time watching the weather come in. We came upon this wood structure that went out into the ocean and I thought was probably a boat launch. The water would come in and at the end closest to the beach the water would spurt like a geyser out of the sand! It was getting dusky and the mosquitos were starting to come up when we turned around to head back.
We headed off to the play and since we had passed the store a couple of times I told Mom I wanted to stop in at Kitty Hawk Kites the next day. She said she had been eyeing it too and now that we knew we could mail anything home we could pick up some whirly-gigs for the porch. The sun was setting over the sound that Roanoke Island is in as we drove over the "hill" of the bridge and everything was golden colored. I said it reminded me of the movie While You Were Sleeping where in the beginning she's reminiscing about her childhood and she said she didn't remember it being this orange. This really was that orange!
The seats we got for the play were in the third row and really excellent. We got there early and listened to the cicadas in the trees. I thought it was a light that was humming, but Mom said probably not since the sound would move from side to side. It also sprinkled on us a couple of times, but the clouds moved really fast and you'd see clear sky again. The play was very well done and while it still sprinkled on and off the real rain held off through the intermission.
In the second act it started to sprinkle and then these huge fat drops started to fall, and then it poured. I was trying to save the program Mom had bought by keeping it under my purse and she was doing the same for the free one. But when I felt the water seeping up my shorts I knew it was lost. I was laughing hard because it was like being thrown in a shower with your close on. They announced they would hold the play for 10 minutes to see if the rain would stop and we all retreated under the rain shelters. Some little girl behind me kept saying it was so cold! I thought that was ridiculous since it was practically 80 degrees outside. Try camping in the northwest in May with no way to get warm and it's 40 outside and raining! The rain did stop and we filed back to our seats, though some people never came back. They finished the play but never came out at the end, though we applauded for a long time. Maybe they were just happy to get it over with? It was the first show of the 75 anniversary season, so I am thinking that may have been why they continued on with the show after the rain. We were able to save our programs after all. The majority of the books were dry and Mom separated the pages so they wouldn't stick together as they dried. They definitely look like they've been through a war and will be memorable to keep. We hung our clothes to dry and Mom said her purse didn't dry for two days! Ahhh, North Carolina weather! It was close to midnight again when we made it to bed with another full day ahead of us on Saturday!
Stay tuned!
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