Rodanthe

So we've been hanging out in Rodanthe, North Carolina for the past few days.  It's a pretty nice little town, kinda sandwiched between two parts of Cape Hatteras National Seashore.  There are actually three towns here, Rodanthe, Waves, and Salvo, but it's hard to tell, except for the signs on the shops.

The other day, we drove down to Hatteras (the town) for the day.  We drove around the state park a bit, and through this flooded campground, which was pretty fun.  We also saw a windsurfer on the beach.

The beach at the state park

Driving through the flooded campground at the state park

Someone windsurfing on the beach -- it was really windy!

After the state park, we went over to the Graveyard of the Atlantic museum (shipwrecks!) which was cool.  I thought the stuff about the USS Monitor was cool (one of the first ironclads, fought for the Union in the Civil War, fought the USS Virginia (Confederate ironclad) until both of them gave up.)  They had some bits and pieces and pictures of a sunken German U-boat, including the Enigma machine. (Cryptography thingy)

The Engima Machine from U-85

After the museum, we went over to take the ferry to Ocracoke Island, which is 2 miles or so from Hatteras.  We waited around for an hour or two, then took a pretty long ferry ride.  The ferry stayed in the sound, so it wasn't too rough, but the boat tipped a fair amount when it turned.  We drove around Ocracoke a bit, then started heading back.  We just barely couldn't fit on the first ferry, so we ended up waiting another hour or so.  By then, it was totally dark, so we spent another hour on the ferry in the darkness when it finally arrived.  By the end of all this, it was 8 or 9, and we were all exhausted, so we went back to the RV and crashed.

The ferry ride over to the island

A beach on Ocracoke Island

I've taken a few bike rides around Rodanthe (and Waves, and Salvo) and it's pretty different from any other place we've been.  The island we're on is pretty narrow, so the towns are basically one road running through the middle, with a bunch of smaller roads going off to either side.  Probably 90% or so of houses around here have "For Rent" signs on them, and most of them are raised up on stilts, at least to some degree.  It seems like quite a few families rented a house for Thanksgiving, because there are a few empty-looking houses, and then one house with 5 or 6 cars in the driveway.  The houses are pretty big, you could certainly fit an extended family in one, but I don't think it would come cheap, especially because most of the houses have some kind of waterfront, or at least access to the water.

My dad and I set CHDK up on both of the cameras, and we both did a timelapse of the sun setting last night over Pamlico Sound, which was pretty cool -- here's mine:

So that's what we've been doing recently!  It's pretty quiet around here this time of year, but I bet it gets pretty crowded in the summer...