Oh, how well we slept last night. Late, as the wind had finally subsided to essentially nothing, we could hear the roar of the surf; inside our tent, we were cozily snuggled into our sleeping bags, all zipped up. Of course, at some point in the middle of the night, I realized I was laying on the zipper, and struggled to get off it and unzip it a little - it took many times rolling over and over, trying to slide around inside the bag, before I could finally extricate myself. Nancy slept throughout, but then claimed in the morning to have felt the tent shake from the wind. "Yeah, the wind, that's it. The wind."
The very difficult headwinds were gone, replaced as expected by lighter winds out of the WSW. We got rolling around 9:30 again, stopping to mail a few postcards, and then on through the Pea Island area. We took a brief rest stop at the Pea Island Wildlife Reserve, where the Charles Kuralt Nature Trail leads around the North Pond. We don't know how it came to be named for the former host of CBS Sunday Morning, but we must assume it was a posthumous honor for all his work bringing attention to this nations wildlife reserves. We saw several turtles, numerous sandpipers and egrets, and something furry swimming by (I think it was an otter, but I've been known to spot otters where there are none before - Remember Tidal Raves?)
There was road work (on the piers, actually) on the Oregon Inlet Bridge, aka the Bonner Bridge, leaving just one lane open with flagmen on either side. That meant that we tagged on to the end of a long line of traffic, and then essentially had the bridge to ourselves as we crossed. No close-passing traffic, no blasts of wind to potentially knock us over the rail - just the two of us, in the light breeze, on a bright sunny morning with visibility to the curve of the planet. We found ourselves eye-level with a pack of six pelicans as the passed by the bridge, cruising over to the surf, presumably for lunch. The view was just beautiful, but we didn't have time to stop to take pictures; a line of traffic coming the other way was waiting for us to finish. The long descent down the other side of the bridge had me grinning wide - no bugs in the teeth, thankfully - as we were free to take the lane without the worry of traffic behind us.
As we got to the bottom of the bridge, we could see the campground at Oregon Inlet, and were thankful to have stopped when we did. It is a campground designed mainly for fishermen, and the amenities are sparse. I should make a point to recommend the Rodanthe KOA to anyone interested in camping out on the Outer Banks; see their website here.
We ate at the Dunes in Nags Head, taking a little time away from the wind, before heading on to what I thought would be an easy-to-find hotel/motel, due to impending rain, near the 158 bridge to the mainland. No such luck, though - we stopped first at the new Hilton Garden Inn, who quoted us a rate of $130 if we wanted a private balcony, $120 otherwise. Uh, no. We headed up 158 towards the bridge, where I expected to find an array of possible places to stay, but where we found but a WalMart and several real estate offices. It was getting late and cold, and the rain was threatening, so we turned back and headed in the direction we had just come, looking for one of the places referred to on our maps. The first one we found was closed, and for sale (didn't look like much of a money-maker, anyway). We were heading for the second one, when Nancy noticed something that looked very much like the back of a hotel over on 158; we turned up the next side street and wended our way there, to a Holiday Inn Express. Although rain seemed imminent, and I was congratulating ourselves for making it to safety just in time, it actually never did rain. Instead, it just got cloudy. I was so wiped out and just a little irritated with myself, so we ordered pizza and just laid around watching hockey ('Canes and Sabres take 3-0 leads in their respective series). Greg, my former boss, must be just beside himself following the Sabres run. I still think we will be near Buffalo when they have their victory parade.
Tomorrow we will head up into rural northeastern NC towards Virginia. The expected weather is like yesterday, except that this time they are forecasting 20-30 mph winds out of the SOUTH. That's a TAILWIND, PEOPLE! We'll see how it goes!
Haiku Moment:
Kitty Hawk Hotel?
Only if you want to pay
bucks out the wazoo.
When was the last time you saw the word "wazoo" in an ancient Japanese verse form? More soon!
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