They sure do grow some big spiders down here. This beauty made her home on one of the boardwalks in the Cedar Point Tideland Trail.

The plan was to ride the Swansboro Bicentennial Bike Trail. This promised to be a 25-mile loop around the mouth of the White Oak River. This river mouth is another one of those wide bodies of water that empties into a Sound. In this case, it empties into the Bogue Sound as it flows past the town of Swansboro.

It turned out that the word ‘trail’ was highly misleading. The route was completely on roads lacking any kind of shoulder, and half of the route ran on major highways. They did have the courtesy of putting up signs imploring the traffic to share the road with bicyclists. We scrapped the biking idea.

The Cedar Point Tideland Trail, on the other hand, was spectacular. It was a 2-mile long, figure-8 trail through a tidewater swamp that featured long winding boardwalks. Did you know that oysters spit? I didn’t. The shallow meandering creeks were chock full of oysters. They would spit rivulets of water 12” straight up into the air. I tried for 30 minutes to get a photo of them spitting, but it just wasn’t happening. As soon as I focused on one group of oysters, a different group spit. Every oyster I focused on refused to spit. It was uncanny, as if the oysters knew I was focusing on them and they were teasing me on purpose.

The Cedar Point Tideland Trail.

There were several of these long gently curving boardwalks.

Some thickets formed tunnels of vegetation.

These wetlands fed the Bogue Sound.

These spitting oysters continually confounded me. They foiled my every attempt to photograph them spitting.

Thousands of tiny little crabs lived in the silt waters.

One last attempt to photograph them spitting - no luck.

After our hike, we drove out to the Bogue Banks, the long narrow Outer Banks barrier island that separated the Bogue Sound from the Atlantic Ocean. It was the usual long row of pastel-colored rental houses. Towns like Emerald Isle, Indian Beach, Salter Path, and Atlantic Beach didn’t really exist as towns with a commercial center. They were just rows of rental houses.

At the very eastern tip of Bogue Banks is Fort Macon State Park. This strategic point guards the Beaufort inlet, the channel that allows shipping from the Atlantic Ocean to reach the port town of Beaufort. Several inferior fortifications were built in the 1700s and early 1800s. Finally, in 1826, a proper fort was built. It was named Fort Macon after US Senator Nathaniel Macon, who advocated funding for the fort.

In General Burnside’s 1862 campaign to capture the strategic points in the Pamlico Sound, he also set his sights on Fort Macon. Burnsides sent General Parke to capture the fort. Parke’s forces surrounded the fort, demanding surrender. The fort’s 400 Confederate soldiers refused to surrender. On April 25, 1862, General Parke bombarded the fort for 11 hours, smashing it to a pulp. The fort surrendered.

After the Civil War, the fort was used as a civilian and military prison until 1877. It was briefly reoccupied by the military in 1898 during the Spanish-American War, only to be abandoned in 1903. In 1923, the army put the fort up for sale as surplus property. The state of North Carolina bought it in 1924 for $1. During the Depression, the CCC restored the fort, and in 1936, Fort Macon became North Carolina’s first state park.

The Army briefly reoccupied the fort during WWII only to return it to the State after the war. One odd incident occurred during the Army’s WWII occupation. Some soldiers rolled some old cannon balls into a fire thinking they were solid shot, that is, just a large round bullet. I guess they thought if the metal would heat up it would retain the heat after the wood died down. Anyway, the cannon balls were actually exploding shell. In the fire, they exploded killing two men. That incident has been dubbed, ‘The last shot of the Civil War’. Very clever, eh?

The fort was nicely restored and we enjoyed milling about. It did command a terrific view of Bogue Sound and Beaufort Inlet. The Confederates, however, didn’t use rifled cannons. Smooth bore cannons were not very accurate. Burnside and Parke’s forces did use the highly accurate rifled cannons. When Parke opened up his bombardment of the fort, his rifled cannons hit the fort with 560 direct hits. Rifling, as I mentioned in an earlier posting, puts a spin on the bullet or cannon ball. That spin gives the projectile a straight predictable path. Smooth bore barrels are like a baseball pitcher throwing knuckle balls, which cannot be thrown accurately - neither the pitcher nor the hitter can know where the ball is going to go. Great for baseball, lousy for military use.

Fort Macon State Park had a nice museum and some terrific nature trails. We checked it all out.

The fort did provide a commanding view.

Entering the heart of the fort where the living quarters were.

Civil War mortars.

Living quarters, storage, and kitchen.

Officer’s quarters and work desk.

A Union ‘rifled’ cannon.

Rifling grooves..

We walked the nature trails at the park.

The Bogue Sound is part of the Intercoastal Waterway.

Glossary of terms used for newcomers: 1) V-Jer. The name of our camper. 2) Saturn. The name of our Van. 3) Duende. Our mischievous gremlin that breaks things. 4) Tata. The good gremlin that helps us fix Duende’s dirty work. 5) The Black Hole. This is what we call Walmart because every time we go in for just a couple of items, we come out spending way more than we figured. 6) QT. Quaint Town. 7) Little Buddy. This is what we call our Dyson cordless stick vacuum.

Dave and Wanda

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