Beach Photo Shoot

Our daughter-in-law, Sara, was photographer for this strange, spontaneous photo shoot involving Ben, Mike and me.

OBX Lighthouses

After church last Sunday Mike and I met up with Ben and Sara and we took off to explore more of the Outer Banks. We weren't going to be there long enough to fully explore the area so we decided to head South and climb a lighthouse. There are four lighthouses along the OBX (remember, that is the cool way to write "Outer Banks") and two of them were advertised as open to the public for climbing. We all wanted to do that. It seemed interesting and we knew the view from the top would be fantastic!

Well, even on a fantastic day such as that one, disappointments could still occur.

As it turned out, the lighthouses were NOT open for public climbing because it was still the off season. Bummer. Still, we were able to walk around outside two of them.

This first lighthouse is the Bodie Island Lighthouse. There was a lot of water around it (well, duh?!) and a lot of birds. There were also a lot of birdwatchers hauling around giant cameras and tripods.  Close enough for the birdwatchers to hear him, Ben said to Sara something like this, "This is why I can't go anywhere! The Paparazzi are always there." Funny guy.

Bodie Island Lighthouse

Sara and Ben must have outrun the paparrazi.

We continued on down the skinny piece of land called the Outer Banks/OBX.  The road looked to have been plowed as sand was piled high on each sand. Some places the highway was this skinny...

No, we didn't get a helicopter ride. This photo is public domain, compliments of Wikipedia. The crazy thing about driving along that highway was that, although we knew that we had ocean on both sides of us, much of the time we couldn't see it because of those piles of sand on each side of the highway. Not to worry, we parked from time to time and filled our shoes up with sand as we climbed over the sand to play on the beach. It was worth filling our shoes! 

These beaches just go on and on and on.

Mike Skipping Stones - Hard to Do With Waves Coming In

Sara and Ben

(I love this photo)

We stopped at another bird reserve and followed an interesting path that had been 

tunneled through the scruffy brush. It was pretty cool.

Aaaah, Ben and His Ladies

I was going to tell you what was going on with me here but I actually can't remember.

From there, we moved on to Hattaras Lighthouse. It is known for its diagonal stripes. Actually, all 4 lighthouses along the OBX are painted differently. That way, ships at sea would know where they were by recognizing the designs on the lighthouses. Although the gift shop was open, the doors to climb up inside were locked until April 1.

But, Ben wanted to climb a lighthouse. We didn't let him. That kid has been climbing things since he was 8 months old!

There were deer all around the grounds there. We see deer all the time in 

Wyoming but these seemed different, more petite.

Speaking of wildlife...

I am not sure which little village we ate at as they kind of ran together. It was a little seafood place but after I sat down Mike pointed out this guy behind us.

I am not a big fan of animal heads hanging over my meal but this one was just weird. Here we were, out in the ocean, far from Wyoming. There hung a Pronghorn. Many people may not know this but 80% of the world's pronghorn live within a 200 mile radius of our town in Wyoming. Many live right in our town. Some of them hang out on the lawn of our church! I asked the waitress about it and she said her boss had gone hunting in Wisconsin or Wyoming or somewhere. I guess it was one of those "W" states, huh?  

Well, I'm going to stop for now but check back tomorrow because I have a photo of a special house to show to you.

OBX

Our second day in North Carolina was sooooo, so exciting! I had recently become rather fascinated with the Outer Banks. If you are cool and in the know, you spell it OBX. You needed to know that.

The OBX is a long, skinny strip of land that runs about 200 miles long. It looks like land that broke off of North Carolina and part of Virginia. It includes places you've heard of.... Kitty Hawk, Nags Head, Hatteras Island, Rodanthe and more. It is somewhere I really wanted to visit and last Saturday that dream came true!

We had about a 3 hour road trip to the OBX.  We crossed some long bridges, including one over Alligator River. We saw lots of swampy places that I didn't want to wade through!

We stopped for lunch on Roanoke Island, eating in the little town of Manteo. Andy Griffith used to live in Manteo and so did my brother and his wife for awhile. That's interesting, isn't it? It is a charming little place. This time of year a lot of places were closed but we enjoyed ourselves all the same.

Our Oldest Son, Ben

Ben and Lots of Seagulls

From there we crossed more water to head toward our hotel in Kill Devil Hills. That is actually the name of a town. I read that rum or gin or something alcoholic was once referred to as Kill Devil. There used to be a lot of pirates in the area and there was something about the alcohol being hidden in the sand hills there.

Before we got to our hotel we stopped at a state park where we could wander through sand dunes. This was not far from the sand dunes where the Wright Brothers made the first flight. I'm telling you, we were surrounded by history.  It was a fun place to wander after having ridden in the car for awhile.

Our daughter-in-law, Sara, got a little ride from Ben. 

I'm not sure how he knew where he was going.

The rest must have done her some good as she was pretty light on  her feet after that!

 I love that Sara has such a great sense of fun and adventure!

It was a place of unique beauty.

 There were weird piles of sand.

 It was really a unique place.

 It felt very much like a dessert but when we got up high on the dunes

we could clearly see that we were on a skinny strip of land with

ocean on both sides of us. 

I loved it!

We had to stop and empty a lot of sand out of our shoes but we were soon moving on to our hotel.

I almost burst into tears when I went out on the little deck off our room and saw 

how close we were to the ocean!

That is exactly what I wanted, an ocean view!