Well I will give it a shot. It was a good time and I enjoyed it, read a little in my book, got to mark hang gliding off my list, ate some seafood, spent some time in the water, got a good tan, didn't burn too much.
I first went to the outerbanks when I was 7 and it was a very sparsely populated place, the biggest thing going was the Wright Brothers Memorial. Now, OMG, it is nothing but sprawl. Eveywhere you look McMansions have gone up everywhere. Strip malls with Abercrombie & Fitch, Tommy Hilgifer, Kmart, and Wings, which is a coastal chain crap store selling all kinds of cheap plastic shit and crap nobody needs, there is one about every 500 yards. The place is over run with yuppies and their children. In most cases I could not understand why they had had children because the only time they didn't ignore their constant whining was to criticize them for their constant whining. Endless displays of crass consumerism, like the Escalade stretch limo that pulled up in front of a restaurant one night. I waited to see who was going to get out. It was your average family of 5, parents, and in law and two kids. Waddling in to strap on the feed bucket. That place is trying to be so much like Myrtle Beach it is pathetic.
South of Nags Head is Pea Island, several miles of National park that cannot be developed. It is wonderful. People speed thru on their way to someplace else. You can park on the side of the road and walk several hundred yards thru the brush to an unspoiled (except for the occasional ship wreck) and unpopulated beach. Just south of there you have the town of Rodanthe. The first house you come to when you enter the town is now abandoned because it is in the ocean. All about town are signs screaming about portions of beaches being closed so that turtles and gulls can nest. Imagine, the rights of these people to access the ocean from the front door of their McMansion impeded because of some animal. I found it rather sickening.
I did climb the Hatteras Light House, which I had done once before in its old location. It had to be moved about a quarter of a mile because the ocean was getting too close. Not a bad climb, and they limit the number of people in which helps, otherwise it would be quite claustrophobic. Had a nice view of the woods below that were planted by the CCCs in the 1930 that changed the whole ecology of the island. The park service is now letting nature take it course and the hurricanes are taking care of most of them.
The last day I went north to Corolla to the brick light house there. It is one of the more recent communities to become gentrified and still has some of its local charm. Should be gone by next year. The young girl selling tickets was one of the nuttiest creatures I have come across in a while. "Could I just get you to stand along this wall until it is your time to go up?" in her best faux valley girl voice. As soon as the assembled did, "Okay! You can go up now!"
The view from there was quite different. The island is much narrower and the sprawl much more evident. A family from western North Carolina was gingerly navigating the walkway around the light and the eldest child, about 5, said to his father "Daidy! Ha' they gone change 'at light bulb?" I didn't hear Daidy answer, he was too busy worrying about the other child squeezing thru the bars.
Returning to earth I witnessed a polished and manicured woman sitting in a high directors chair outside the entrance screamed across the court yard at a man who had failed to put up his bike into the bike rack. She was some kind of employee/volunteer, what ever they were paying her was too much.
But what I did enjoy, was the evenings, when the crowds had left the beaches, left behind their sand castles and the sky would turn crimson with the setting sun behind me. Ghost crabs would come out of their holes and run about. Plovers would arch their backs and fight one another for territory to probe for tiny clams. Pelicans would skim the waves in formation and occasionally dive straight down from great heights. The wind would blow in off the ocean and the stars would come out and in time the moon, huge and orange, would emerge from the water too. It would leave a path of light on the water like a runway, like a highway back to someplace else. A boat on thehorizon would turn on its lights and the fishing piers to the north and the south would have competing fire works. The rest could be tolerated. This was the beautiful twilight, a lonely time. I have come to value the feeling.
Topic: Shakesthegrounds Rumblings (Read 2590962 times)