Growing up in the landlocked Midwest, the idea that you could get to the ocean in anything less than the grueling 16+ hour trips of my childhood spent in the back of a 15-seater van was a revelation. Where we live in the Triangle means the beach is an easy weekend away or even a day trip... ok, it's a far cry from our 25-minute walk to Barceloneta in Europe, but for most Americans, this is a relatively short distance. Our first year we also discovered that tacking on a few more hours would get us to a really special place: the Outer Banks.
The Outer Banks are a 200-mile chain of narrow barrier islands that outline the coast of North Carolina. They are a popular destination on the east coast. Maybe you've even seen the bumper stickers "OBX"? Many families or friends book beach houses for annual reunions... even humorist David Sedaris has written about it! Nowadays we feel like a house can be quite reasonable when split between a bunch of people. But imagine our delight back when, as broke students, we discovered you could camp for $12 a night!
It seems like everyone who goes to the Outer Banks has a favorite island. We've been going to Ocracoke (pronounced "oh-kra" like the vegetable and "coke" like the cola) for over a decade. It is reachable only by ferry, either from the mainland across the Pamlico Sound or from Hatteras Island, just to the north. The pirate Blackbeard used to ply these waters and frequently anchored in Ocracoke inlet. The place was isolated for so long that you can still hear a touch of the "high tide" accent (pronounced "hoy toyed" in the native brogue) among locals. There is a small museum as well as a British cemetery, where sailors from a British vessel sunk by a German sub during World War II rest in foreign soil. To guide passing mariners, nearly every island on the Outer Banks boasts a lighthouse, usually painted in a distinctive black-and-white pattern, but Ocracoke's, in a simple, solid white, is the oldest in operation.
Apart from the village, the rest of the island is dominated by the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Its campground is where you can pitch a tent with nothing but a sand dune between you and a glorious expanse of - what is for all practical purposes - a private beach. The sea oats wave golden against the bright blue sky... and they help stop erosion. Funny little sanderlings and sandpipers run along the edge of the surf, and small, roped sections of the beach show where loggerhead turtles have laid eggs. We usually bring our assortment of toys: books, frisbee, volleyball, a stunt kite from local shop Kitty Hawk Kites, and bodyboard (Cape Hatteras itself is popular with the surfers). On clear nights, the stargazing is incredible with the luminous Milky Way stretching across the sky, and on the ground, the highly entertaining ghost crabs scurry in and out of their burrows in the sand, much to our dog's delight. A few days of this life makes for a relaxing way to wrap up the summer!
The Outer Banks are a 200-mile chain of narrow barrier islands that outline the coast of North Carolina. They are a popular destination on the east coast. Maybe you've even seen the bumper stickers "OBX"? Many families or friends book beach houses for annual reunions... even humorist David Sedaris has written about it! Nowadays we feel like a house can be quite reasonable when split between a bunch of people. But imagine our delight back when, as broke students, we discovered you could camp for $12 a night!
It seems like everyone who goes to the Outer Banks has a favorite island. We've been going to Ocracoke (pronounced "oh-kra" like the vegetable and "coke" like the cola) for over a decade. It is reachable only by ferry, either from the mainland across the Pamlico Sound or from Hatteras Island, just to the north. The pirate Blackbeard used to ply these waters and frequently anchored in Ocracoke inlet. The place was isolated for so long that you can still hear a touch of the "high tide" accent (pronounced "hoy toyed" in the native brogue) among locals. There is a small museum as well as a British cemetery, where sailors from a British vessel sunk by a German sub during World War II rest in foreign soil. To guide passing mariners, nearly every island on the Outer Banks boasts a lighthouse, usually painted in a distinctive black-and-white pattern, but Ocracoke's, in a simple, solid white, is the oldest in operation.
Apart from the village, the rest of the island is dominated by the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Its campground is where you can pitch a tent with nothing but a sand dune between you and a glorious expanse of - what is for all practical purposes - a private beach. The sea oats wave golden against the bright blue sky... and they help stop erosion. Funny little sanderlings and sandpipers run along the edge of the surf, and small, roped sections of the beach show where loggerhead turtles have laid eggs. We usually bring our assortment of toys: books, frisbee, volleyball, a stunt kite from local shop Kitty Hawk Kites, and bodyboard (Cape Hatteras itself is popular with the surfers). On clear nights, the stargazing is incredible with the luminous Milky Way stretching across the sky, and on the ground, the highly entertaining ghost crabs scurry in and out of their burrows in the sand, much to our dog's delight. A few days of this life makes for a relaxing way to wrap up the summer!
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