Funny how hard it is to get to the beach from
Carrboro. I'm the kind of person who can just
throw a change of clothes into a bag, jump in my
car and make the four-and-a-half hour drive to the
Outer Banks. Well … I
was
that kind of guy once.
Now it's a bit more complicated, with a wife and
daughter. The trip has to be planned in advance.
The weather has to cooperate with our plans, and
we all have to be in agreement about plans - which
is the difficult part, since my wife is happy to
pot around in her garden and my daughter would
rather terrorize the neighborhood with her little
friends than "have fun" at the beach with her
parents. But every so often the planets are in the
correct alignment and we do make a trip to the
beach. Usually we go to Wilmington, because not
only is it closer but it's more than a beach trip,
since it's also a pretty hip city - so nights are
not spent fighting over the channel-changer while
the surf beats the sand outside. There's more to
do.
But we have visited the Outer Banks since I left bachelor life behind. And it's exciting to wake up early in the morning ready to make the drive and then sit on the front steps for two hours waiting for the rest of my family to get ready, even though they've done all their packing the night before. By the time they get in the car, everyone's in a bad mood, and it'll take a miracle to survive the trip.
But I have one. I put my battered copy of King Mackerel and the Blues are Running into my cassette player, and in moments Bland Simpson, Jim Wann and Don Dixon have us in the mood and ready to face whatever obstacles are in our way between Carrboro and the Atlantic.( Click to Play. It will get you in the mood.)
North
Carolina's Outer Banks are a string of barrier
islands that begin at the Virginia border and go
south for 100 miles to Ocracoke and Portsmith
Island. In the past, travel to and between these
islands was difficult, and the area was isolated
from the rest of the state. When roads and bridges
were built, the islands were opened for
development and tourism, both of which have gone
slightly overboard. Still, there are areas that
haven't been touched, and the Outer Banks contain
some of the largest stretches of protected beach
in the country. The Outer Banks are the number one
surfing area on the East Coast, easy enough for
beginners and interesting enough for experienced
surfers when storms at sea are feeding the waves.
There are a number of fishing piers up and down
the coast, and surf-fishing, deep-sea charters and
fishing in the sound are all fruitful. Like
anywhere on the coast, the best time to be here is
when the other people aren't. That would be
anytime but June, July and August. That's OK. The
best fishing is in the fall, and you can swim as
early as April and as late as November and even
into December (if you don't have a heart
condition).
Hatteras Island
Hatteras is a
33-mile-long island that juts out into the
Atlantic. Its changing reefs are a graveyard for
ships from all over the world, and it's rich in
stories of wrecks, rescues, Civil War battles and
hurricanes. Until 1963, the only way to the island
was by boat, and the locals still speak with an
accent that sounds faintly British. Islanders
lived off fishing, boatbuilding and harvesting
whale oil, turtles, oysters and seaweed, which
they traded on the mainland for other
goods.
Much of the
island is protected by the National Parks Service
and can't be built on, but there are seven
villages scattered along the road that runs north
to south, and there are over 5,000 year-round
residents. On the Pamlico Sound side of the island
are marshes and wetlands, home to a large variety
of birds and wildlife, some who live there
year-round and some just passing through on the
way north or south. On the sandy beaches that look
endless, sea turtles still lay their eggs. A few
years ago we were arrested for sleeping on the
beach by a park ranger. As he was taking us in, we
spotted a baby sea-turtle crawling in the rut of a
4-wheel drive vehicle, horizontal to the shore he
was trying to reach. We picked him up and brought
him to the sea and watched him swim away. Then we
helped the ranger find more, and we helped them
find the sea as well. Wheel ruts were not the only
danger to these little guys. We could see places
where the turtles had broken out of their eggs and
their tiny trails ended where the footprints of a
crab or a bird began. When we were satisfied that
we had found them all, the ranger decided not to
arrest us and instead thanked us and let us go. So
if you have a 4-wheel drive vehicle, keep in mind
that your trip to the remote fishing area may be
endangering sea turtles (and your gas consumption
is endangering the humans).
The
world-famous Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was begun in
1868 and finished in 1870, and is the tallest
brick lighthouse in the USA. The black-and-white
spiraled beacon is 198 feet high and sits on a
platform of granite blocks that rests on a mat of
yellow pine. The most impressive thing about the
lighthouse is that in 1999, when it was threatened
by beach erosion, they moved it 2,900 feet. They
didn't take it apart and put it back together.
They picked the whole thing up and lifted it with
hydraulic jacks onto roll-beams and moved it inch
by inch. It took 23 days. As for major tourist
attractions in the Outer Banks, this is the big
one (though there are several other lighthouses,
all of which are pretty impressive).
Nags Head
North of
Hatteras, the town of Nags Head is the oldest
resort community in the Outer Banks. Named for the
horses that once roamed the islands, legend has it
that the locals would fasten a lantern around a
pony's neck and walk along the beach. Ships at sea
would think the light was a sailboat and steer
towards it, getting grounded or wrecked on the
sand bars. The locals would then "rescue" the
ship, or at least anything of value on it. The
first hotel was built here in 1838, and the first
house was built on the seaside in 1866 by William
Gaskins Pool. When other people realized that you
could build by the sea and survive, more houses
appeared, some on logs so they could be rolled
back to escape rising tides. Today Nags Head is
full of hotels, restaurants, shops and people,
especially in the summer when traffic can make you
wish you were home watching TV and mowing the lawn
instead of at the beach. One of my favorite
restaurants, Tortugas Lie, is in Nags Head, where
you can eat from a varied and interesting menu of
Jamaican, seafood, burgers, pastas and salads.
Great bar with lots of atmosphere and interesting
people too. Nags Head has a number of nightclubs
and live-music venues.
Jockey's Ridge
This giant
sand dune has been immortalized in Bland Simpson's
"Sand Mountain Song" from the musical
King Mackerel and the
Blues Are
Running, and
is a favorite place for hikers, nature lovers and
even hang-gliders. It's the tallest sand dune on
the East Coast and a great place for flying kites.
Children love to roll down the slide, and from the
top you can get a fantastic view of the Atlantic
and the sound. Because it's made of sand, the
shifting winds change the shape of the mountain
continuously, so you can come back a few years
later and it will look entirely different. Click
to listen to Bland Simpson's "Sand Mountain Song"
from King
Mackerel and the Blues are Running: Songs and
Stories from the Carolina
Coast.
Click here for more on Jockey's Ridge
Kill Devil Hills
Kill Devil Hills is best known for Wilbur and Orville Wright's historic flight on Dec 17th, 1903. The Wright Brothers Memorial, which rises above the town, has a visitors' center with a full-scale replica of the original 12-hp, two-wing biplane; exhibits and historical talks; and a tour of the area. Collington Island, which is on the sound-side of Kill Devil Hills, is an area of creeks; pine and hardwood groves; small harbors; and new housing developments, which threaten this once-quiet fishing community.
Manteo
Roanoke Island is probably the most interesting
place of all, but it's not really an Outer Bank.
It's an island that connects the North Carolina
mainland to the Outer Banks and one of the most
historically significant places in America. Many
people believe that the first colony in America
was Jamestown in Virginia, but actually this is
not true. Jamestown was the first
successful
colony. But the first
actual colony was on Roanoke Island, settled by a
group of people sent off to the Americas by Sir
Walter Raleigh in 1587, and commanded by
naturalist John White. The first European child
born in the new world was Virginia Dare on August
18th. White went back to England for supplies but
the war with Spain kept him from returning for
three years. When he finally did, the colony was
gone. The only sign of them was the word
"Croatoan" carved in a tree. What happened to the
first colonists is one of history's greatest
mysteries. The story of the lost colony is the
subject of the longest running outdoor drama in
America: The Lost Colony, shown at the site of the
original settlement at the Waterside
Theater.
The town of
Manteo has been burned five times since 1920 and
is the seat of Dare County, named of course for
that first child, Virginia Dare. Downtown is a
complex of interesting shops and restaurants and
features the
Elizabeth
II, a replica
of the sailing ship that carried the colonists to
the new world. The Waterfront is a condominium and
marketplace complex built in traditional style
overlooking the docks and the sailboats that fill
it during the summer. Manteo is a town in
transition and by the time you read this there
will be more reasons to visit than those I have
mentioned. It's no Wilmington but if you tire of
sitting on the beach and listening to the waves
every day or night, come visit.
In Conclusion
Like many of
the beaches in North Carolina in the summer, if
you like golf, SUVs, people who haven't heard that
lying in the sun all day causes skin cancer, men
and women with beer cans or bottles permanently
affixed to their hands, obesity, and all the other
byproducts of an overindulgent society with too
much money and not enough imagination, then you
will love the Outer Banks. On the other hand, if
this kind of stuff depresses you, you can also get
away from it. It's a big place. But if it's
complete privacy you seek, you may have to wait
for the off-season. (There's always the Greek
Islands -
www.greektravel.com
) Of course, if you happen to own a house here
it's a whole different story and the traffic of
the summer months becomes a slight inconvenience
that you know how to avoid or even to profit from.
For a beach community or series of communities on
the East Coast of the U.S., the Outer Banks even
at their worst are better than most. Any
unprotected coastal area suffers the same fate in
the U.S. because it's man's nature to be greedy.
Luckily, the Outer Banks have more protected areas
than perhaps anywhere else, and as long as they
stay this way they will remain popular not just
for those coming for the NC beach experience of
golf-sun tanning-beer-music and more beer, but
also people looking to get away from
"civilization."
Click Here to see Outer Banks photo album
See also: Jockey's Ridge, Wilmington, Ocracoke, Wrightsville, Kure Beach, Southport