National Parks: Part III, The Cape Hatteras Light Station | Eastern North Carolina Now

North Carolina's Outer Banks Again: Destination - Cape Hatteras Light Station

    Living less than an hour and fifty minutes from Nags Head, my staging area to the National Seashore, I am regularly drawn to the beauty of one of the most beautiful and unspoiled seashores on eastern coast of the United States of America. On this quick trip to the seashore, my wife would not accompany me. I was alone, but I would be undeterred.

    On that fine spring morning, after a beautiful sunrise and with the early morning thunderheads threatening, I would leave for Cape Hatteras. It was my destination and I was determined to brave the inclement weather to climb to the top balcony ringing the light house at the Cape.


    Early sunrise in Nags Head: above. Later sunrise at the same locale: Below.


    As I headed south down NC Hwy. 12 in my Mustang, the convertible top down and James Taylor’s “Sweet Baby James” singing sweetly and loudly all about me, I drove in and out rain of showers, stopping just north of Bodie Island Light Station to put my top up. With some measure of rain in the back seat, I stopped at the ongoing renovation of the Oregon Inlet Life Saving Station to put the top down a second time to let the moisture evaporate.


    And evaporate it did, as the clouds began to break ever so slightly as I headed south to the next of many stops to enjoy the peak-a-boo warmth of the springtime sun, the aroma of the sea and the sweeping grandeur of the geological oddity: North Carolina's Outer Banks.


    The clouds are still thick with rain at the next stop east of the lakes in Pea Island Wildlife Refuge: above. Map of the day trip to Cape Hatteras: below.

    Click on the map for a much larger look at the Outer Banks and Eastern North Carolina.

    Once again heading south, with the skies conveniently parting to reveal a deepening blue sky, I noticed that the villages of Rodanthe, Waves and Salvo had grown significantly since I had last visited the area around five years ago. Stopping in any villages today; however, was not on my agenda as I made my next stop at the Salvo Day Use Area. The day use area is one of two on the sound side of these barrier islands. Many people use these areas to: rest, soak in the natural beauty, or use the area as a staging platform for wind surfing or wind sailing in the wide and often windy Pamlico Sound.


    The Salvo Day Use Area is an area with abundant hard surface parking and multiple access points to a sandy beach and the clear, clean, salty waters of this component of the Pamlico Estuary. Also on the grounds of the day use area is cemetery that is lasting monument to some of the natives that continued as inhabitants as they survived the shoals and the harsh storms that continuous batter these far eastern barrier islands that alternately protect the mainland of the North Carolina coast. Among those interred, there are some former Southern soldiers from the War Against Northern Aggression and former Coast Guard life savers. Many served the northern part of the island that borders the Bodie (pronounced body and named for the bodies that washed up on the shores - north and south of Oregon Inlet) Island Light Station.

    I took a seat in the sandy rise along the sandy shore, recharged from the contemplative moments of calm as I drank the slushy O.J. from the spout of 32 oz. hard plastic dispensary. I must admit, I am captivated by the combination of beautiful, brilliant colors as a backdrop to the wind inspired exploits of young men and women riding the rippled waters of this handsome sound.

    To record my experience for posterity, I use my trusty digital camera (6.1 mega pixel, a fine 12x zoom lens and always shot in the manual mode) to take the snapshots of God's beautiful world. My family has shown a slightly required patience on our trips, but today, I am flying solo and left to my own devices, I tend to be a bit trigger happy. My philosophy: shoot every good shot I see, clean them up on the computer (adjust to plum and crop for effect) and store them away for future use or sale. For much of the rest of this travel journal, I will show a good many pictures as wide as the parameters of the scripts of our site will allow. So sit back, and take a look. If these pique your interest, we will have the much larger files for sale, when we complete betterphotographynow.com.


    More wind surfing shots on the Pamlico: Below.



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( October 7th, 2009 @ 3:47 pm )
 
Love the photos Stan! makes me want to go there now...



Washington, DC: Part I, Arlington Cemetery National Parks and other National Places, Body & Soul, Travel Savannah, Georgia

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