Not a garden post this time. After the Open Garden, which I will blog about at a later date, we lit out for a well earned vacation to the Outer Banks of NC. We snagged a house on the Upper end of the town of Avon, NC. A grand time... sight seeing, relaxing, hitting the waves and let me tell you, despite my age, I can boogie board with the best of them.
At right, my youngest son Colin, is offering the gratuitous Hatteras-in-hand pose from the day we visited the south end of the island. When we lived out here by the OB, we actually got to visit the lighthouse before they moved it. It really was in danger from the encroaching sea. Now it is safe and a nice place to visit. We made it up the highest lighthouse in North America with no incident!
On the other end of the scale, there is the shortest lighthouse on the Outer Banks, the Ocracoke Lighthouse. Alison and I agree that if you want to vacation in the village of Ocracoke, you have to really want to be a beach bum for a week. The is just about nothing else to do except fish, sunbathe, wave play, and just hang out. You are a ferry ride from anywhere and there are only a few touristy shops in the village. Sounds like my kind of place.
Boogie boarding has long been my favorite thing to do at the coast. The day before this video was taken, I broke a board when I dropped off the top of a 5-6 wave and got flipped and rolled a couple of times. Now, I can't tell you that I bounced back up after that like I did when I was 21, but I did get right back in the saddle. Had to show those boys of mine how to get it done!
OBX... if you haven't ever been there... you gotta go. Beats the heck out of ANYWHERE on the Gulf Coast and all of those over crowded mega vacation spots on the East Coast (Myrtle, Daytona, Va Beach, Charleston, etc.
The OBXperience is over and we have once again left a piece of ourselves out there. I sure hope it isn't another seven years before we get back. Alison commented that she is infected with "OBitis" and regular hits of it are necessary to sustain a tolerable quality of life. I think fate has over looked the fact that I was cut out to live somewhere extreme like that... maybe someday. The OBXperience included an all to brief visit to a Nature Conservancy site called Nags Head Woods that is a unique ecosystem called 'forested dunes' that will almost make you believe that you are in the mountains on the other side of the state. Miles of trails wander through this gorgeous place. A bit of arm twisting was required to get the boys out to Jockey's Ridge. "What's so special about a big sand dune?" was heard more than once. Well, once there we had to twist arms to get them to leave (that and a reminder that we could hit the beach when we got back to the rental). Jockey's Ridge is the highest sand dune on the east coast and is quite a site. In its wandering around over the years (as active dues are want to do) it has swallowed a motel and most of a putt-putt golf course. The latter still has a castle visible on the east side.
Later in the week, the surf began to get higher and higher. The undertow was quite strong by Friday thanks to swells from Hurricane Bertha waaaaay out in the Atlantic. Great boogie boarding conditions were there for the waiting, although on a less sloping beach the conditions would have been to die for. A care eye was kept for Rip Currents and some additional instruction given in the boarding school. Despite the rough conditions, those boys learned pretty well how to handle a wave and best of all how to shake off getting flipped when a big one hits!
