Day two of that first trip was where things got a little more complicated. From Rodanthe, we first went south, to Cape Hatteras, to see the lighthouse, then north again to the Virginia Dare Bridge, westbound on US 64 and south to New Bern, then east via increasingly minor roads to Davis, North Carolina, where we caught a ferry to the cabins on the island. By road, this was a little over 250 miles.
Cape Hatteras Lighthouse has a special place to me as an engineer; in 1999, with the shore fifteen feet from the base of the lighthouse and foundation damage obvious, the Parks Service decided to move it half a mile. This was done by excavating and bracing, then inching a crawler similar to those used to move rockets at Cape Kennedy under it. Once it was fully supported by the crawler, it was then moved slowly enough that vibration and lateral stresses on the structure were effectively zero. As a masonry structure, it would not have withstood them very well, but instead shaken itself apart. Once it was in position, a new foundation was built, and the load transferred carefully from crawler to slab, leaving it whole and undamaged after the move. It was called "the move of the millennium," and justly won a string of awards for engineering and structural relocation. It is also the tallest lighthouse, at 208 feet from base to lantern, in the United States. However, it is also closed to direct access for half the year, including when we were there, so the best we were able to do was visit the keeper's quarters and museum. While we were there, we saw an osprey, also known as a fish eagle, which is unique among raptors for its gull-like wings, which form an arch rather than staying rigid like an eagle's or drooping toward the torso like a hawk or falcon's.
After Cape Hatteras, we turned northward once more, stopping for lunch at a place called Froggy Dog, in Avon. I remember little of the food, though I remember that they'd lined most of their spare wall space with bookshelves filled with cheap paperbacks. I have nothing against cheap paperbacks, and am a fan of books in general, so that didn't bother me terribly. The most interesting part of that particular meal was that our son lost his National Park passport book, and discovered it about ten miles down the road. He was in tears, but when we returned, it turned out another family had seen it fall out of the car, had taken it inside, and the bartender had held on to it for us on the supposition that we'd be back for it, so they get points for good customer service on that.
We crossed over into Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge almost as soon as we were back on the mainland, and here began the first of many disappointing non-encounters with local wildlife. You may think, O gentle reader, that Yellowstone has bison, that Yosemite has bears. I know better. I know that any time a place advertises wildlife of a specific type, what they really mean is that said creatures will turn shy and reclusive until the very moment you depart, at which time three bears will be seen feasting on the carcass of a dead bison. That is not an exaggeration; that happened at Yellowstone the week after we passed through. At Alligator River, there were signs up every few miles saying "BEAR CROSSING." It should be no great trick at this point to guess how many bears I saw, but it was a number commonly drawn in an oval. All of the bears I saw belonged to the null set. The bear population of Alligator River NWR, for our brief passage through, apparently turned sideways and hid behind the trees, averting their snouts from our passage and snickering at the rube who thinks "BEAR CROSSING" means that he will see a bear crossing the road.
That said, it was about as pretty a country as can be expected from a swamp that used to be softwood timberland, complete with rustic, abandoned sawmills, decaying farmsteads, and, you guessed it, swamps. This sounds like I am criticizing it, but the truth is that it was very pretty country, and in the hands of the right painter would be spellbinding. Unfortunately, I am not a painter, and I was still upset about the bears. Mrs. Traveling Matt didn't know this at the time, as I didn't know then that it would become a recurring theme of my life, and that the only way I would ever see wildlife in a park was if they somehow got their signals crossed and accidentally herded themselves to the top of a mountain to get away from me, only to find that someone had inconsiderately placed a road across their mountain, and I happened to discover the road.
We turned south and crossed through New Bern, and about then my daughter started feeling queasy, and we started feeling uneasy about the ferry across to Cape Lookout and the cabin. The combination of queasiness and timing led to some very questionable driving decisions, culminating in going about eighty miles an hour down a rural two-lane full of winding turns and cane fields on either side so that vision was obscured. A local police officer kindly pointed this out to me, also that the speed limit in the area that he stopped me was thirty-five, and that even on the interstate in North Carolina, the speed limit was not eighty. He also pointed out the turn the locals would have taken to get to the ferry a little faster, and a gas station at the corner that had free water. He did not, however, arrest me, as the reason we needed water was because my daughter had erupted, Vesuvian, all over the back seat, coating the books we had gotten at Wright Brothers, her brother, the back seat, the floorboards, the back of my seat... it would, in point of fact, be easier to list the areas of the car upon which she had not vomited, which were mostly exterior. The smell, and my obviously harried state, were sufficient incentive for the officer to lower the ticket to simply twenty miles per hour over, which did not require a subsequent in-person appearance, and didn't require my automatic arrest. Under the circumstances, I was grateful for the reduced ticket, the water recommendation, and the shortcut.
As it happened, they held the ferry for us. The ferry from Davis to the island is a single-vehicle, maybe a two-vehicle, contraption, with two crew, and feels for all the world like a bass boat that carries a car. Normally the waters of Core Sound are fairly flat, but occasionally they get a storm that whips them up pretty well. I've seen a few videos of their more exciting crossings, but the day's excitement had passed for us by now. The fine people who operate the ferry service there stayed a full hour and a half to two hours past closing time, waiting for us, were considerate and polite about the entire thing, and cheerfully ferried us over. We took a quick head count and made sure they got an excellent tip out of the entire thing. We checked into our cabins, deflated our tires to accommodate driving on sand, and settled in for the night.
The cabins at Cape Lookout are fairly spacious; even with a much larger family they would easily accommodate all of us. Ours had three sets of bunk beds and a folding table with a couple of chairs, a screened-in porch, and a lovely beach view, but then, they all had lovely beach views. They have propane stoves, flush toilets, and running water, but no electricity. That was a sacrifice which I was willing to make under the circumstances. We discussed it and almost immediately, as I recall, decided to cancel the Wilmington leg, stay here an extra day, and let our daughter recuperate. I thoroughly enjoyed the extra time, but what we did with it will have to wait for another day. Meantime, get out your blanket and pick a bunk.
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