Days in Rodanthe: Day 2

 Ben got in about 10:30 pm and went straight to bed. We all slept well. I was up with this lovely sunrise making breakfast. The point of getting LibraryAnn was to have a kitchen on wheels, and while I don't care for the daily routine of cooking at home, I do have fun in my little portable galley.

While Jessie took Franklin to the dog park, I returned to Bodie Light House with Ben. We got this shot from an observation deck at the end of a long boardwalk. It was a good chance to catch up with him and his first view of Bodie.

We decided to grill burgers and pack them along with fixin's for a picnic lunch at the Hatteras
Light.  Since I was not focused on pulling a trailer, I

could enjoy the scenery and was even more impressed with the fragility of these barrier islands. At some points, the sound was a couple of car lengths to our right and the dunes to our left encroached on the road with the ocean just beyond. There was considerable road construction and an obviously temporary bridge in place where the DOT had decided to bridge a new inlet rather than try to fill it in. An amazing dedication keeps the road open.

As we drove south towards Avon and Hatteras, we began to get an idea of the extent of flooding caused by the recent hurricane. For miles, both sides of the road were lined with piles of rubbish waiting to be hauled away--duct work, flooring, insulation, furniture, mattresses, toys--people's homes and livelihoods destroyed.

We stopped for lunch at the Buxton Woods picnic area

at the base of Hatteras Light. After that we wandered the grounds and gift shop. Jessie and I purchased National Park passports with a dream of visiting many more and having them stamped. As we walked across the way to the old light house location we were all nearly crippled with sandburs, particularly Franklin. Ben carried him to the pavement beyond and I fetched the car.

From there we drove to the end of the Island and the Graveyard of the Atlantic museum. There is a monument in the parking lot to General Ambrose E. Burnside's visit to Hatteras during the Civil War.  He was my grandfather's great uncle. I also have a Quaker ancestor from Yanceyville meeting. Maybe that is why North Carolina has always felt like home.

 On the way back, we hit the Food Lion in Avon for some fresh shrimp. I came to North Carolina in 1976 to enter a graduate program at the Bowman Gray School of Medicine in Winston Salem. A friend from Chicago who grew up on NC military bases told me I would hate NC but love graduate school. Well, I lasted a year at Bowman Gray but have yet to leave NC. I did enjoy several camping trips with other students that year, including tent camping on the Outer Banks. It was my first trip to the Carolina coast and I remember eating shrimp boiled in pickling spices at a picnic table, smelling the fresh sea air and tossing shrimp shells to the gulls. I don't think I'd ever tasted anything so good and wanted to do boiled shrimp for Ben and Jessie.

 We had a wonderful meal of shrimp, flounder, slaw, sour dough bread, corn on the cob, and later, marshmallows cooked over the grill.

Ben and Jessie took Franklin to the beach near our camp site to try to fly their kite (and get Franklin tired enough to sleep well). The sunset over the sound was just so lovely, I did a whole lot more gazing than dish washing. Eventually Venus appeared and so did the kids. They traded a very tired Franklin for me and we went back in the dark to fly the kite with glow sticks tied to the tail and then burn sparklers in the sand.

It has been just the trip it needed to be--family reconnecting in this beautiful natural world, away from the daily cares, over good food and good times. Back to reality early tomorrow as Jessie works tomorrow evening and Ben and I need to prep for Monday.

We will leave too early to get our passports stamped at Bodie--guess that means we will have to come back...