Frisco Campground, Hatteras National Seashore, Hatterland,
Ned and I decided to revisit the sleepy little town of Ocracoke this morning. We had fun visiting the museum and poking around the quirky shops. The most interesting tidbit we learned was that the island has their own dialect or Ocracoke brogue. We watched a movie about it and learned some of the slang. It's based upon Shakespearean English, but we couldn't understand anything they were saying. Thick brogue indeed.
My favorite shop was the community general store. It had an ecclectic array of just about everything from a wooden Indian statue to several boxes overflowing with baseball cards. Ned's big discovery was a new chocolate bar he hadn't heard of before. Yum...tasted pretty good!
We eventually left Ocracoke Island and took a ferry to the next island in the Outer Banks. The ferry ride was about an hour. It used to be shorter, but due to Hurricane Matthew the channel was reconfigured thus the longer ride. Once on Hatteras Island you noticed an immediate difference from Ocracoke. Instead of little funky, artsy houses with white picket fences, you have new huge homes lined up and brightly colored. There is also no real "there, there", but instead retail spaces that are not walkable distances. Hatteras is a bigger island and has several towns. More of a place where'd you drive to a destination rather than meander thru the streets.
I liked Ocracoke better, but Hatteras has less mosquitos, so Hatteras wins.
After checking into the Frisco campground, we went in search of the famous Hatteras Lighthouse. It's the tallest brick light house structure in the U.S. It is open to the public for viewing and has 257 steps to the top. Of course we had to do it. A really sweet ranger, Emma, gave us some basic instructions and then let us know that due to the high winds we wouldn't be able to walk the balcony at the top. It was pretty calm at the bottom so we thought she was crazy. Once at the top the ranger there let us know that the winds were now reading at 74 mph! That's officially hurricane strength. Wowza. We had fantastic views, but yeah it was super windy.
I was impressed with Gary and Ned holding it up...yuk, yuk.
We also toured the lighthouse museum. The lighthouse was moved from the original site in 1999 because the beach had eroded away and it was 150 feet from the ocean. It was relocated almost 3000 feet. It was fascinating to learn how they moved this lighthouse. The bottom picture is Ned investigating one of the 100 rollers used to move it.
I love the picture of the old car. So, how did they solve the problem of driving through so much sand? By building plank roads. Pretty clever. Kinda reminded me of the Autopia ride at Disneyland.
Frisco Campground is still part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. It's a beautiful campground, not quite as close to the beach as last night, but easily accessed by a long boardwalk. Gary fixed us up with some Moscow Mules and we decided to go exploring. It was dusk and so beautiful. We had a blast playing in the ocean while balancing drinks in our hand.
We were treated to lots of deer grazing in the marsh. Maybe the deer were enjoying watching us take selfies as much as we enjoyed watching them.
Tonight is our last night camping together before we go our separate ways. We decided on dinner at Chez Cruise America aka Gary and Linda's RV. Ned BBQ'd chicken, Linda made a salad, Gary fixed the corn and I drank Moscow Mules. Here's me looking like a happy camper.
This campground has the same set up as last night. Cold shower sheds scattered around the campground. At 11ish at night, Ned and I decided to get a quick rinse and take our chances with the cold shower. It's windy tonight and a bit cooler, but I didn't seem to mind it too much. Mmmm - That might have something to do with the Moscow Mules.
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