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On the road again:
Greetings from North Carolina’s Outer Banks, where the temperature is in the 50s, but a northerly wind is howling at a sustained 20 to 25 miles per hour, giving a piercing chill to exposed skin and resculpting the seaside dunes.
Offshore, the waves are white-capped as far out as I can see, and the two dozen fishing trawlers that were present on previous days are truant, due to small craft warnings.
Today's Story
It is in times like this that I feel like the third of the Three Little Pigs, the one whose home is made of straw while his buddies’ homes are made of brick and wood.
It’s not that Cyndy and I are lazy, like Pig Number Three. But we do live in a home that’s fragile, made primarily of thin sticks and aluminum and plastic.
And it’s got wheels and tires. With every bump in the road, we’ve been told, our home experiences the same ill effects as if it were in a small earthquake.
Our plumbing is mostly external, so we are extremely conscious of cold weather.
And our utilities, when we are in campgrounds with hook-ups, are connected with temporary hoses, lines, and cables.
These are reasons why we invest many hours talking about where to go next, especially in the colder months.
As an example, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, we left Louisville, Kentucky, bound for our current location on the Outer Banks. We traveled more than 700 miles in three days—Friday, Saturday, and Sunday—motivated primarily by the weather forecast for the Tennessee / Carolina mountains.
We drove Interstate highways 75 and 40. The temperatures ranged in the 50s and 60s as we passed through those higher elevations.
But on Sunday night, while we were in a campground with an elevation of seven feet above sea level, the roads we had traveled were hit with a winter storm of snow and freezing rain. Not suitable for a truck and trailer.
And what about the Outer Banks?
This “land,” such as it is, is basically a glorified sandbar, a chain of barrier islands and spits that separate the Atlantic Ocean from Pamlico Sound and the mainland.
Beaches that open to the sea, state and federal parks, shipwreck diving sites, and winds suitable for surfing and kite surfing make this a popular tourist destination.
Ranging 200 miles north to south, the Outer Banks extend from southern Virginia to the community of Ocracoke, North Carolina.
At its widest, it stretches four or five miles east to west, but is only 150 yards wide at its narrowest. Much of it is a national seashore.
Native Americans who lived here prior to European settlers included nomadic, Algonquin-speaking tribes of Chowanoke, Secotan, and Peteskeet.
The village of Wanchese, on Roanoke Island, where we camped for our first four nights, was named after the last known ruler of the Roanoke Native Americans.
Roanoke Island was the site of England’s first settlement in the New World, an endeavor sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh, who actually made two attempts to colonize here in the 1850s.
Troubled by a lack of supplies and poor relations with the indigenous people, one group of settlers mysteriously disappeared without a trace and their settlement is now known historically as The Lost Colony. It is the subject of theatrical productions and ongoing archaeological digs.
A century ago, the community of Kitty Hawk became famous as the location where the Wright Brothers experimented with their primitive airplanes in 1903.
The Outer Banks boasts six lighthouses and hosts a population of 58,000 in 25 communities.
Only two bridges and two ferries connect the Outer Banks to the mainland. A third ferry links Cape Hatteras, another popular destination, with Ocracoke Island at the southern tip.
So what does this have to do with Cyndy and me living in a fragile trailer?
Well, just as temperatures rise and fall and precipitation comes and goes, the land forms of the Outer Banks are constantly changing due to the vagaries of hurricanes and Nor’easters.
The weather and climate here are described as “unique.”
“Storms are a part of life on the Outer Banks,” reads the opening sentence on OuterBanks.com.
The web site reports, “In 2003, Hurricane Isabel tried to create a new inlet between the villages of Frisco and Hatteras, and a deep channel separated the towns until the government closed it up with thousands of tons of sand.”
And, “As recently as 2011, a new inlet was formed between Rodanthe and the Bonner Bridge.”
The Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962 lingered overhead “for days, [with] pounding rain, storm surges, and constant high winds” that destroyed countless hotels, homes, and businesses.
But Hurricane Dorian, in the first days of September 2019—just three months ago—struck the Outer Banks with sustained winds that peaked at 185 miles per hour, making it “one of the most powerful hurricanes recorded in the Atlantic Ocean.”
State Highway 12, the only road to run its length, was closed and didn’t open all the way to Ocracoke until the first of December.
We drove on it—with just our four-wheel-drive truck, sans trailer—to Kitty Hawk and points north on December 2 and to our current campground at Oregon Inlet, a few miles to the south, this past Thursday, December 5.
We’ve done some extensive beach walking while camped here. Tomorrow, we intend to walk about four miles at a wildlife preserve that features thousands of migratory water fowl.
But today it’s a little too breezy to be outside for very long, so Cyndy did some extensive house cleaning while I wrote many pages in my next book.
Tonight, as we cooked supper, the draft through the range hood vent caused a flame on the gas stove to flicker. If we turn off the space heater, the interior chills rapidly.
On Monday, we’ll travel farther south to Ocracoke and take the ferry to Cedar Island, a ride of nearly three hours. Weather permitting, of course.
So, yes, we pay attention to the weather, constantly aware of the frailty of our home while being thankful that we aren’t camping in a tent.
Thanks for reading my stories.
Click here to see some of the photos that Cyndy has taken on our journey.
God blesses everyone ... no exceptions.
Robert (Bob) Weir
