 |
| Roadtrip OBX |
 |
| OBX roadtrip |
Over the past week I’ve been heading up the eastern coast driving along Ocean Hwy, route 17, from Charleston. 17 turned to 70 and then changed to 12. Moving along the coast through towns I was able to see some pretty heavy traffic and loads of stop lights but when I moved away from the traffic and got on the smaller route 70 the drive through the national park was just gorgeous. I never had any idea that the North Carolina coast could be so gorgeous.
As I moved over the brackish waters of North Carolina and surveyed the barrier islands there I was able to see some really neat towns that are far from tourists and are super quaint in their own right. Sadly I wasn’t able to stop and really check them out as I was trying to catch a ferry out of the smallest of these towns. At one point I went through a fantastic rainstorm where I was having trouble seeing anything in front of me. I quickly realized that the way I had my board strapped to the top of my car allowed a bit of showers through the doors. Having half of my body soaked, my head trying to squeeze a shirt between me and the low ceiling/door of my car as a buffer, and drive nearly blind seemed like a normal way to handle the situation but after the rain let up a bit my neighbours in the van next to me gave me strange looks. I’m sure they were thinking “man, I really wish I had a soaking ball of cloth on top of my head”. I’m sure it wasn’t anything more than jealousy. The ferry was nice, it was dark out so it was difficult to see anything other than the stars above but it’s difficult to imagine seeing that many stars anyplace else. The ship rocked about in the black water and aside from the one girl re-visiting her dinner it was quite a pleasant and relaxing experience.
We landed on the island of Ocracoke at around eleven in the evening. In the little tourist village down there it was difficult to see anything other than the drunken kids wandering the streets on bikes and skateboards making a mess of themselves. It would have been pretty entertaining to sit and watch but I had to either find a nice place to sleep on the beach or hit the next ferry north to the Hatteras before it launched in an hour.
I drove along the stretched-out island away from all the vacationing festivities into the dark night till I found a little road that took me to the road. I drove down it till I felt that my little car was about to get stuck. I parked and walked all the way to the beach. It was really peaceful with the waves splashing on the beach. The stars and moon were shining as were these little glowing things on the shore. I have no idea what it was, and I tried checking, but they just looked like little pieces of clear stuff when I looked at them with a lantern. I had passed a sign that said no camping on the beach which sadly seemed to be the best place to camp. I might have turned outlaw and stuck it out but the road seemed to be used often and I didn’t want to wake up with a ranger breathing down my neck so I decided to drive fast and see if I could catch the next ferry which was to depart in fifteen minutes and I wasn’t sure how close I was to it. After getting nearly stuck in the sand again, I made it out to the main road where I had to floor it.
Zipping along a skinny island that has deer that can jump out at your car at anytime is a pretty thrilling thing to do. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who might have bad night vision. Driving down I noticed many frogs trying to cross the road and I wondered why they would feel the need to go across a barren, two lane highway. As I pulled into the ferry station there was a guy waving me in, like I had just made the last spot, and it seemed I did as they pushed off not two minutes after I rolled on.
